All Aboard for Tokyo

Sometimes even the most sensible athlete seems to go a wee bit nutty. Take Ralph Boston: he figures the way to break the world's record in the broad jump is to hit himself on the head with a sponge.

All summer, Boston practiced with a sponge dangling from a crossbar, 9 ft. above the broad-jump pit. The idea was to aim for it with his head--on the theory that the higher he jumped the farther he would go--and last week he nearly jumped out of sight. In the final U.S. Olympic trials at Los Angeles, Boston bounded 27 ft. 101 in. on his very first try--a full 7 in. past the world mark held by Russia's Igor Ter-Ovanesyan. But the wind gauge registered 5 m.p.h. (maximum allowable: 4.4 m.p.h.), and the new record did not count. So back went Boston for another try with the wind 1 m.p.h. Legs flailing, one arm flung dramatically above his head, he sailed 27 ft. 41 in. Ralph was satisfied. "Now the pressure's on the other fellow," he said. "I can be the bystander."

Easy & Enterprising. Not everybody took the trials that seriously. Meet-weary, afraid of overtraining or getting injured, Shotputter Dallas Long easily tossed the 16-lb. ball 64 ft. 9 in.--far enough to win, but 3 ft. short of his own pending world record (see box). The high jumpers quit at 6 ft. 10 in., blaming the runway; the pole vaulters called it a day at 16 ft. 6 in., complaining about the wind. Henry Carr, the world record holder in the 200-meter dash, ran fourth in his specialty.

But there were plenty of others at least as enterprising as Boston. For Sprinter Bob Hayes, the "world's fastest human," the Los Angeles Coliseum was Last Chance Gulch; sidelined for three months with a torn hamstring muscle in his thigh, he had to finish at least third in one of the dashes to earn a trip to Tokyo. Hayes did even better: he tied the American record (10.1 sec.) for the 100-meter dash. Like Broad Jumper Boston, Ohio's Rex Cawley had an intriguing theory about breaking world records: don't train. Cawley's worked too: he ran the 400-meter hurdles in 49.1 sec. And then there was California Schoolteacher Mike Larrabee, who really should have stayed in bed. Chronic gastritis, ruptured pancreas and all, Larrabee tied the world mark by sprinting 400 meters in 44.9 sec.

Three Out of Three. For sheer exuberance, though, nobody quite matched Spokane's Gerry Lindgren, 18, who hardly looks old enough to carry the water bucket for the best track and field team ever assembled in the U.S. A frail (120 Ibs.), squeaky-voiced high school graduate who can't make up his mind whether he wants to be a biologist or a politician, Lindgren runs at least 200 miles a week--"in the sand like Herb Elliott, up hills like Peter Snell." But until last June, Lindgren had never run a 10,000-meter race in his life. By last week he had run a grand total of three--and won them all.

The first was at Corvallis, Ore.; Lind-gren's time was a so-so 29 min. 37.6 sec. One month later, at the U.S.-Russia track meet, he shaved 20 sec. off that time. Last week he ran the fastest 10,000 meters run by an American all year: 29 min. 2 sec.--winning by 70 yds. and waving happily to the wildly cheering crowd. No one, least of all Lindgren, has the foggiest idea how fast he can really run. "I'm not sure I can do any better than 29.2," Lindgren says. "But I sure hope so, sir."

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