Sport: Olympic Trials

At Jones Beach. A towheaded girl with a little boy’s face and the torso of a minnow, 15-year-old Katherine Rawls of Miami Beach, Fla., surprised everyone a year ago by winning the national breast stroke championship at 220 yd. Last week in the Olympic Swimming Trials for Women at Jones Beach State Park. L. I., she surprised everyone again. Sure that she could qualify for the team with third place or better, her coach told her to take it easy in the 200-metre swim, save her strength for the diving that came later the same afternoon. Minnow Rawls obeyed too well. Blonde, bowlegged Margaret Hoffman of Scranton. Pa., who had trained over longer distances and dieted to take off 8 lb. before the trials, won with a U. S. record of 3:12.6. When Minnow Rawls wriggled out of the water, someone congratulated her for taking third. Said she: “Oh, no, I’m sure I’m fourth.” Judges concluded she was right.

Minnow Rawls had one more surprise left. She clambered onto the 10-ft. springboard, began manipulating her tiny sunburnt person toward the water as though she were impersonating the knife in a game of mumblety-peg. A brilliant half-gaynor helped her get the points she needed to win the event, 78.64 to 77.75, from goldilocked Georgia Coleman, U. S. diving champion since 1929.

Broad-shouldered Helene Madison of Seattle, whose big feet make fine paddles, won the 100-metre free style race as everyone knew she would. Next day she took seven seconds from the world’s record for 400 metres—5:32.4.

Eleanor Holm,whose swimming has not yet marred her pretty freshness with big muscles and fat, breaks a backstroke record almost every time she goes for a swim. This time it was the world’s record for 100 metres, which she swam 1:18.2. A crowd of 55,000 wanted to see what would happen between Minnow Rawls and Georgia Coleman in the platform dive. Again Minnow Rawls surprised everyone: she withdrew. Georgia Coleman’s running swan dive looked too short and the title went to Dorothy Poynton of Los Angeles, who wore a white bathing suit, a red-&-white bandanna around her head.

At Cincinnati, Duke Poao Kahana-moku of Hawaii, who has been on every U. S. Olympic swimming team since 1912, arrived by airplane for the final trials. Two men qualified in each of the 100-metre free style heats. In his heat Kahanamoku finished third, pulled himself wearily out of the pool, shook the water out of ears, looked gloomily at his muscular legs as if dissatisfied with the black sunburn which he has spent 42 pleasant years acquiring. Said he about his legs: “They were O. K. for 75 metres—after that it was just too bad.” Not greatly surprised at his failure, the Duke enjoyed himself at Cincinnati, as he usually does, by clowning about in the water, spurting mouthfuls of it at the sides of the pool. When two other Hawaiians, the Kalili brothers, Manuella and Maiola, won their heats, he said: “That tickles me.”

Next day Maiola Kalili finished third in the final heat, behind Ray Thompson of Annapolis and Al Schwartz of the Illinois athletic Club, who won. Clarence (“Buster”) Crabbe won the 1,500-metre free style race; but spies from the Japanese Olympic team, who sat peering at the meet and scribbling in note books, wrote a long description about a freckled 14-year-old Floridian, Ralph Flanagan, who finished a close second. Crabbe won the 400-metre free style two days later, in better time than the Olympic record.

Toward the end of the meet, officials began to wonder what had become of George Kojac, Olympic backstroke champion in 1928. When he failed to appear, Olympic Coach Robert J. H. Kiphuth announced angrily: “Kojac is in hiding somewhere. He will be given no special consideration. . . . He is out.” Presently George Kojac allowed his whereabouts to be known. He was working as counselor in a New York boys’ camp, lacked funds to compete in this year’s Olympics. The race he might have won, the 100-metre back stroke, went to 16-year-old Danny Zehr of Fort Wayne, Ind.

At Palo Alto. When he beat Stanford’s Ben Eastman in a quarter-mile race three weeks ago, stocky little William Arthur Carr of the University of Pennsylvania failed to oblige Californians by sharing their amazement. “I know I can run 47 sec. again,” said he, “but I don’t know what Eastman will do the next time.” In the final track & field trials at Palo Alto, Calif, last week. Carr had his chance to find out what Eastman would do at 400 metres. Carr won a fast heat. Eastman won a slow one. In the final, Carr ran from an outside position. He slipped in behind Eastman at the turn, sprinted down the straightaway, won by six clear feet.

In an amazing season of records and reversals, Eastman is not the only U. S. runner this year who has set world’s records and then been beaten. Gene Venzke, tall, sombre Pottstown, Pa. high-school boy, was unanimously conceded a place on the U. S. Olympic Team when he broke the world’s record for a mile last winter. It looked as though Venzke would surely be what U. S. Olympic teams have lacked since 1912—a runner good enough to win at 1,500 metres — until he went to Palo Alto last week.

Venzke had a field of eight to beat in the final. He let Henry Brocksmith of In diana hold the lead till the back stretch of the last lap before he sprinted to pass him. What happened then made it the most amazing race of the meet. When Venzke took the lead, Norwood Penrose Hallowell, a Harvard miler who was beaten in the intercollegiate meet, sprinted to over take him. Venzke matched Hallowell’s pace for 20 strides then dropped. Two more collegians,Frank Crowley of Manhattan College and Glenn Cunningham of Kansas, closed in and passed Venzke in the last 60 yd. Venzke slowed down to a slow jog, finished fourth — too far back to make the Olympic team for which he had been training three years.

Overshadowed by the defeat of East man and Venzke was the defeat of Frank Wykoff, hailed a year ago as the first runner in history to cover 100 yd. in 9.4 seconds. In the 100-metre final last week, Wykoff was running against Ralph Metcalfe, George Simpson, James Johnson and Eddie Tolan. At the finish Metcalfe was two steps in front of the field. The other four were almost abreast behind him. When the judges had compared notes they gave Tolan second, Simpson third, Wykoff fourth.

When U. S. track athletes failed to justify expectations at the 1928 Olympics, they were accused of using up their strength in the trials. What made it look as if the U. S. team might have done the same thing last week were five world’s records: 14 ft. 4⅜ in. in the pole vault by William Graber of Southern California; 9:14.5 in the 3,000-metre steeplechase by Joe McCluskey of Fordham; 14.4 for the 110-metre hurdles by Jack Keller of Ohio State; 52 ft. 8 in. for the shot-put by Leo J. Sexton of New York Athletic Club; 165.54 in the discus throw by John F. Anderson of New York Athletic Club.

At Evanston, 200 girl track athletes competed for 18 places on the U. S. team. Mildred (“Babe”) Didrikson, 19-year-old insurance clerk of Dallas. Tex., won three of them: 80-metre hurdles (her favorite), running highjump, shot-put. To keep busy, she competed for and won two A. A. U. championships not listed on the Olympic schedule—baseball-throwing and broad-jumping.

In Manhattan, a knotty little German gymnast, Alfred A. Jochim, failed, principally through his performance on the parallel bars, to regain the A. A. U. championship which he held for six years before losing it to his teammate from Union City, N. J., Frank Haubold, in 1931. Haubold, Jochim and seven others qualified for the U. S. Olympic Team.