Relay Day

Anyone with plain horse sense would know that it wouldn't do for two big-name races like the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness to be run the same afternoon. But for 38 years the season's two biggest college track meets--Iowa's Drake Relays and Philadelphia's Penn Relays--have been run the same days.

Everybody seemed happy about the arrangement but the track coaches, who sometimes want to be in both places at the same time, and sometimes do what the Illinois coach did last week. He sent 14 of his athletes to Philadelphia, 19 to Des Moines.

Mostly Texans. At Des Moines, where 2,236 competed in track events, there was a race every six minutes. There was never a moment when sprinters and quarter-milers were not wiggling in & out of ankle-length sweat suits, or busily flexing leg muscles. In the old days, one of the great attractions was Knute Rockne, who showed up with the Notre Dame track team to see the fun and play cards with cronies. This year the annual card game was still an off-field attraction; on field, the attraction was Texas' powerful contingent.

Bill Martineson, a 21-year-old ex-marine now at Baylor, took the 100-yard dash in a photo finish; little Jerry Thompson of the University of Texas won the twomile. One record to fall in two days of competition was broken by long-legged Harrison Dillard, Negro hurdler from Ohio's Baldwin-Wallace. His time for the 120-yard high hurdles: 0:14.1.

Mostly McKenley. In Philadelphia, a spindle-legged Jamaican named Herb McKenley stood out among the 3,000 contestants. McKenley has broken the indoor 300 and outdoor 440-yard records, is hopefully touted as the greatest quarter-miler since Ben Eastman.

The first day, in a University of Illinois uniform, he helped his team win two relays. Then McKenley ripped off a 0:47.8 quarter to give his team a lead on a third relay event. Says his coach, Leo Johnson: "He's streamlined . . . and when he runs, his long nose high in the air, he looks like modern design itself."

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