Competition for Fun

For the first time since 1937, the combined Oxford-Cambridge track team was on a mission to the U.S. The purpose: to flex muscles, see the sights, win a few races. Explained one Oxford high-hurdler: "We try to be as casual as possible. With us, track is for relaxation and recreation." Britain's easygoing invaders carried informality so far that their only "coach" was a slender, 20-year-old Oxford medical student, Roger Bannister, who was also the squad's captain and star miler.

Well Run. In Princeton last week against a combined Princeton-Cornell team, Britain's Bannister demonstrated the casual approach. In the mile, he loped along with a nine-foot stride. When he decided to take over, he spurted to the front. In characteristic English fashion he glanced over his shoulder, once almost took a header running too close to the track's concrete curb--and still won in 4:11.1. It was the second-fastest mile run on U.S. cinders this year.*

Without question, Roger Bannister was Britain's best foot forward in spiked shoes since the great Sydney Wooderson. Another Oxford lad, Nick Stacey, ran off with the 100-and 220-yd. dashes and Teammate Philip Morgan took the twomile. But in the hurdles and field events, where professional coaching pays off, the coach-less Britons flopped. They lost the meet, 9-4.

Well Taught. The difference was Princeton-Cornell's battery of two head coaches and two assistant coaches, including Cornell's venerable (85) Jack Moakley. His well-tutored pupils won six events. In his 50 years as track coach at Cornell, Jack Moakley had developed more championship track squads than he could remember. But he won even more renown as a competitor who put as much emphasis on sportsmanship as on winning. In 1920, when he went to Antwerp as coach of the U.S. Olympic team, Jack Moakley had time for all foreign athletes who sought his advice and guidance. When Canada's star hurdler, Earl Thomson, went lame in practice, Moakley put his trainer to work on the sore spot; in the finals Thomson beat the U.S. men for the championship.

Few Americans understood better than silver-haired Jack Moakley what the Oxford-Cambridge team was proving in its U.S. tour: that competition can be fun and that a good athlete does not have to train to razor fineness to make a respectable showing. This week, Bannister & Co. planned to do better against a combined Harvard-Yale squad, but their day in Cambridge, Mass, would not be spoiled if they did not.

-The faster one: Don Gehrmann's 4:10.1.

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