Swimming: One for the Old Folks

At last week’s A.A.U. championship in Maumee, Ohio, the competitors were so young that in some cases the only way to tell a boy from a girl was by whether the bathing suit had a top. Seattle’s Steve Krause, 15, surprised everybody including himself (“I never dreamed that I would swim that fast”) when he splashed to a new world record of 16 min. 58.6 sec. in the 1,500-meter freestyle. California’s Claudia Kolb, 15, won the women’s 100-meter breast stroke, the 200-meter breast stroke and the 200-meter individual medley, topped it off by helping her Santa Clara Swim Club team to victory in the 400-meter medley relay. Then there was a trio of precocious14-year-olds−Indiana’s Judy Humbarger, Pennsylvania’s Mary-Ellen Olcese and California’s Patty Caretto−with three firsts and two seconds among them.

In that company, Martha Randall at an aging 17 almost seemed to be a has-been. At the Tokyo Olympics last year, the best she could do was a third in the 400-meter individual medley. “One more year,” she said then, and this summer she began commuting daily from her home in Wayne, Pa., to Philadelphia to swim six miles a day under the watchful eye of Coach Mary Kelly. “Martha’s a very quiet girl,” said Kelly, “but a very determined girl.”

She had to be. In the 400-meter freestyle at the A.A.U. meet, her competitors included the defending world-record holder (at 4 min. 39.5 sec.) Marilyn Ramenofsky, and Patty Caretto who only two days before had set a new world mark for 1,500 meters. For the first 300 meters, it was strictly a two-girl race—with Martha third. Then she began to sprint, flashed past Ramenofsky, overhauled Caretto in the last lap, and drew out to win by 2.5 sec. Her time: a record-smashing 4 min. 39.2 sec. Next day, just to prove it was no fluke, Martha also won the 200-meter freestyle, cracking a U.S. record in the process. Sighed Martha: “One more year, and then I’ll quit.”