Sport: Runners in the Wind

Some 300 young men representing universities from Ohio to Minnesota outdid themselves in a high wind last week, in the Western Conference track & field championships at Evanston. Two, going with the wind, outdid the world but their records were likely to be officially thrown out. Eight were earmarked for U. S. Olympic notice.

Untypical U. S. athlete is Ohio State’s junior, Jack Keller, whose 14 sec. time in the 120-yd. high hurdles beat Percy Beard’s A. A. U. record of 14.2 sec. A John Galsworthy enthusiast, 6 ft. 3½ in. tall, gaunt and saturnine, he is married, has refused to join a college fraternity. As a high-school freshman he stood around watching Ohio State’s Star Sprinter George Simpson but the track coach put him into the hurdles instead. Last week, after winning the high hurdles, he seemed on his way to a low hurdles record when he pulled a leg tendon.

Entirely typical is Ohio State’s sprinter Donald Bennett, 22, a red-headed sophomore who took up running in grammar school to cure lung trouble. Policemen saw him running in a Toledo park and chipped in to buy him his first track shoes. He is a “straight” runner (carries himself erect). Last week he ran the 220-yd. dash in 20.5 sec., beating R. A. Locke’s 1926 world record of 20.6 sec. He ran the 100-yd. dash in 9.5 sec., tying the world record set by Negro Edward Tolan in 1929 and equalled since by Frank Wykoff and Emmett Toppino.

Also running with the wind was Iowa’s gold-toothed George Saling. After Keller pulled a tendon in the 220-yd. low hurdles, Saling breezed on to tie the world record.

Running against the wind as well as with it was Indiana’s Henry Brocksmith, conscientious and stocky, who won the mile and two-mile runs. On the backstretch of the oval track the distance runners, breasting the wind, moved as though in slow motion, exhausted.

Unaffected by the wind was the Western Conference shot put record (49 ft. 5½ in.) made by Minnesota’s Clarence Munn. Two Negroes named Brooks won titles in the field. Michigan’s Negro Brooker Brooks threw a discus 148 ft. 1¼ in., beating Illinois’ giant Frank Purma, Kansas farmboy who has done 154 ft. 1½ in. Chicago’s Negro John Brooks, a 142-lb. student of political science, crowded the Conference record broad jump, made by another Negro Dehart Hubbard, with a predicted jump of 25 ft.

Western athletes preen themselves on their consistency, point to the rarity among them of a form reversal, a “flash in the pan.” Last week, the favorite won in nearly every event. Favored Michigan won its 12th conference championship.