Higher & Faster

It was Sophomore Night at last week's A.A.U. Track and Field championships. Under the lights at Memorial Stadium in Bakersfield, Calif., a crowd of 11,600 watched in awe as a pair of second-year college boys proved that youth can serve itself, thank you, with record-breaking performances that did much to boost U.S. hopes for the 1968 Olympics--and beyond.

At 6 ft. 1 in. and 165 lbs., Southern Cal's Paul Wilson, 19, hardly looked strong enough to bend a vaulting pole, let alone provide any serious competition for U.S.C. Teammate Bob Seagren--who only two weeks before had set a new world record of 17 ft. 7 in. Wilson, who learned to vault using bamboo from neighbors' yards, soared 17 ft. 8 in. to beat Seagren's mark by an inch.

Then there was Jim Ryun. Already the fastest miler in history at 3 min. 51.3 sec., the University of Kansas sophomore had little hope of beating that time last week. Nowadays, world mile records are nearly always the result of careful planning and coordination: human mechanical rabbits are employed to insure a fast early pace, and the whole operation is carefully monitored by coaches armed with timing charts and stop watches. But there were no rabbits at Bakersfield, and the pace was so slow on the first lap that Ryun reluctantly decided to do his own pacemaking. His time at the half--1 min. 59 sec.--appeared to rule out any chance of a new record. Then Jim turned it on. With a full 600 yds. to go, he began to sprint, flashed through the last quarter in a fantastic 53.5 sec., and broke the tape at 3 min. 51.1 sec.--paring .2 sec. off his own world mark.

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