Heja, He/a

"What's the sense of killing yourself?" asked Joe Smith, a milkman from Medford, Mass. Last week, when he jogged in fifth in the Boston Athletic Association marathon, Joe Smith looked amazingly fresh for a man who had just run 26 miles. Could he have done better if he had exerted himself? "Probably," answered Joe, "but I'm still alive. That's what counts."

Joe's attitude, in other years, might have been good enough to win the Boston marathon, but it also helped to explain why no U.S. runner has won an Olympic marathon since 1908. In last week's race most of the 142 competitors were there for the fun of it, had devoted relatively little time since last year's event to the steady, grueling drill and training that makes champions. One exception was contestant No. 63, Sweden's gaunt, 31-year-old Karl Goesta Leandersson. As a kid, Karl thought nothing of hiking 15 miles to the mountains so that he could ski another 15 or 20 miles. In summer, he trained barefoot to toughen his feet against blisters; in winter he kept fit by jogging over the ice in spiked shoes.

As Leandersson plodded along in second place last week, he kept looking at his wrist watch, timing himself at landmarks. Swedes among the 500,000 who lined the route shouted encouragingly: "Heja, Heja [Go to it], Leandersson." The Swede stuck to his prearranged pace and, approaching the rugged Newton hills, he had a good lead over his 141 rivals.

Then one of his Achilles tendons, injured while training on the ice this winter, began to hurt, but there were urgent reasons why Leandersson couldn't let it stop him. At the Hotel Valadalen in Jamtland Province, Sweden, where he is a groundkeeper, guests had taken up a collection to help finance his trip to Boston; he couldn't let them down. He also felt that he had been robbed of Olympic glory last summer when he cut his toe on some glass while running barefoot and was unable to compete. This was his big chance, so he kept pushing himself until he wobbled tired and stiff-legged across the finish line--half a mile in front of Runner-Up Victor Dyrgall, a Manhattan accountant.

After the race, Sweden's Leandersson explained carefully that he liked Boston and the U.S. but that he wanted to get back home. The reason: "Too much comfort here. In Sweden, we live a harder life. I want to win the Olympic marathon in 1952."

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