Better than Ever

The town of Tulare, Calif, (pop. 14,000) is often called "Mathiasville," in honor of its No. i citizen. Last week, playing host to the U.S. decathlon championship contest for the second time, 5,000 Tulareans packed the stands of the local high-school stadium to watch Olympic Decathlon Champion Bob Mathias in action against 25 topflight U.S. athletes, all aiming for U.S. Olympic berths.

As a gawky 17-year-old kid at the 1948 London Olympics, Mathias won the decathlon gold medal with a margin of 165 points over his nearest competitor. Now, a poised and handsome 21, a veteran fullback of Stanford's 1951 Rose Bowl team, and filled out to a rangy frame (6 ft. 3 in., 200 Ibs.), Bob is better than ever. At the end of five events (the 100-meter dash, broad jump, shotput, high jump, and 400-meter run), Mathias was not only far in front of the field, but far ahead of his 1950 world record pace.

In the second night of competition on the floodlit field, Mathias almost came a cropper in one of his specialties, the 110-meter hurdles. Winging off to a sprint start, Mathias knocked over three of the ten barriers, but still managed to beat his best previous decathlon time, 0:14.7, by a tenth of a second. He threw the discus nearly 158 ft., pole-vaulted 12 ft. 3 3/4 in. (9 inches under his best mark), made a prodigious javelin throw of nearly 194 ft., and wound up his two nights' work with a 4:55.3 clocking in the 1,500-meter run.

In all, Mathias totaled 7,825 points (under a new decathlon scoring system), 382 more than his 1950 world record and 770 more than Runner-Up Milton Campbell, an 18-year-old Plainfield, N.J. high-school student.* The victory made Mathias, who did not defend his title last year, the first man in U.S. decathlon history ever to win the event four times.

-Third man to make the team, and to prove that the decathlon is not entirely a young man's game: Floyd Simmons, 29, of Los Angeles, who was third in London in 1948.

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