Reluctant G-Man

Special Agent Frederick Loren Wilt of the FBI works as hard as anybody else at his Manhattan headquarters job five days a week. After hours he takes on job No. 2. He goes home to Brooklyn and runs a dozen miles in the park; early each morning he runs some more. By last week, this sort of routine had helped make slender (145 Ibs.), 29-year-old G-Man Wilt the best two-miler in the U.S. and a real threat to current U.S. mile king Don Gehrmann of Wisconsin.

Fred Wilt is not sure why he goes to all the trouble. "Running is like poetry," he says. "The world could go on without it." It just happens that running is the thing Fred Wilt does best.

Like Gil Dodds and Glenn Cunningham before him, he had reached maturity as a distance man only in his late 203. He was no great shakes in track at Indiana University, where he specialized in crosscountry and the longer distance races. Gradually he mastered the two-mile run. Then, since track promoters were hunting high & low for milers, he reluctantly tackled the shorter distance. Last week, wearing the winged-foot emblem of the New York Athletic Club, he toed the mark against six rivals in the Philadelphia Inquirer Mile.

His ankle hurt and he had a bad second-row starting position. At the first turn, Fred Wilt lagged along in last place. The announcer gave the time for the quarter: 60.3. That was just about what Wilt had counted on. He couldn't afford a slow pace. Because he lacked the kind of speed that allows a man to burst into a blazing "big kick" finish, Wilt held to the strategy of keeping the field stepping along so that no one else could save up for a big kick. He let out a notch, moved into second place and then brushed by Ireland's John Barry to grab the lead.

The strategy worked. In the stretch only wiry Fred Wilt seemed to have anything left. He pulled away to win by eight yards in 4:11.8, the fastest Inquirer Mile ever run. In Boston next night, he ran away with the Knights of Columbus two-mile for his fifth straight win. That set the stage for the big event of 1950's indoor track season. This week Special Agent Wilt will have a chance to catch Wisconsin's Gehrmann in the classic Wanamaker Mile at Madison Square Garden.

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