Record Wreckers

Timers stared at their watches in pop-eyed disbelief. Spectators flipped the pages of month-old A.A.U. swimming handbooks and decided that they had wasted the purchase price. The pool at Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium was boiling with record breakers. Before the national indoor championships ended, every American short-course mark except the 440-yd. and 1,500-meter freestyle records was suddenly out of date. Among the new champions:

Charlie Bittick 21, a member of the Olympic water polo team, whose rugged shoulders and arms, developed in one of the world's toughest games, made him the meet's only triple winner: loo-yd. and 220-yd. backstroke and 400-yd. individual medley--all in record times. Born in landlocked El Reno, Okla., Bittick moved to Long Beach, Calif, at eleven and quickly developed an abiding taste for the Pacific Ocean. A few years later he was a high school swimming star. At the University of Southern California, where he is captain of the swimming team, he manages to stay on dry land long enough to major in a course called television communications. Built like a halfback (6 ft. 2 in., 195 Ibs.) turned fashion model, the blond, handsome senior splashes through a tough routine four hours daily, gradually shortening the distances he swims and steadily stepping up the pace. "It's just like a pyramid," says Bittick. "You start at the bottom and work up to the peak.''

Steve Clark, 17-year-old high school speedster from Los Altos, Calif., scored a major upset early in the three-day meet by beating Australian Murray Rose in the 220-yd. freestyle with a record-smashing time of two minutes flat. Picking up momentum, he flailed through the 100-yd. freestyle in 46.8 sec.--an achievement that ranks with an 8-ft. high jump, a 16-ft. pole vault, or a 100-yd. dash run in less than 9 sec. Slender (155 Ibs., 5 ft. 11 in.) for a swimmer, Clark plans to put on twelve more pounds "in the right places" for added strength. An amphibian prodigy who started swimming in earnest at the age of four, Schoolboy Clark is confident that his 100-yd. record will be broken, but he hopes to be the one to do it. Says he: "I certainly don't think I've reached my fastest."

Chet Jastremski, 20, son of a Toledo steel-mill worker, and a premedical student at Indiana University, became the first breaststroke swimmer ever to navi gate 100 yds. in less than a minute. His time: 59.6 sec., .5 sec. less than the remarkable 1:00.1 he clocked during a trial heat. A stocky, quiet A-student, Jastremski meets Coach James Counsil-man six mornings a week at 7 a.m., practices for an .hour, attends classes until 4 p.m., swims again until 6. "A very dedicated boy," says Counsilman.

Like most top swimmers, Bittick, Clark and Jastremski shave the hair from their legs just before a meet in the belief that it cuts down drag. "Maybe it's just psychological," says Bittick, "but you feel you are kind of slithering along." To slither better, Bittick also shaved the hair from his arms before his triple-crown performance. Clark's normal headdress is a close crew cut, but for the indoor championships he took a drastic trimming. He bounced out of the Yale pool with a shining, billiard-bald scalp. Actually, said

Clark, "I figured I could save $2, so I asked Coach George Haines to cut my hair with an electric razor. It looked so awful that I asked another swimmer to give me a complete shave. That's all there is to that."

At Hialeah, Fla., last week, a trio of 14-year-olds ranked high among the winners at the A.A.U. women's swimming championships. The Indianapolis Athletic Club's Kathy Ellis won the 100-yd. butterfly; her teammate, Jean Ann Delle-kamp, took the 100-yd. breaststroke; and California's Donna de Varona, youngest member of last year's U.S. Olympic team, was first in the 200-yd. individual medley. Olympic Star Chris Von Saltza, a veteran at 17 and about to retire from competitive swimming, won the 100-yd., 250-yd. and 500-yd. freestyle events, as well as the 200-yd. backstroke.

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