Sport: MANHATTAN TO MOSCOW

TRACK and field stars traditionally take it easy the year after the Olympics. Not in 1961. New marks have been set at almost every meet as U.S. trackmen have raced through the spring, scrambling for a place on the team that takes off next month for a competitive tour of Europe and Russia. Tickets for the big trip will go to the top two men in each event at next week’s A.A.U. championships in New York. There, and at the N.C.A.A. championships this week in Philadelphia, athletes from across the country promise to tear the record book to tatters. The top events:

100-Yd. Dash. So far this season, four men—San Jose State’s Dennis Johnson, Villanova’s Frank Budd, Oregon’s Harry Jerome, Florida A. & M.’s Bob Hayes—have equaled Mel Patton’s 13-year-old. 9.3-sec. record. Somewhere between Manhattan and Moscow, one of the quartet may well set a new mark. Best prospect: Johnson, a sinewy Jamaican sprinter who has already been clocked in 9.2 sec. while running ahead of a helpful tail wind.

One-Mile Run. The U.S. has only two better-than-four-minute milers: Oregon’s rangy Dyrol Burleson, who shaved .2 sec. from Herb Elliott’s American record with a 3:57.6-min. mile last month, and stubby Jim Beatty of Santa Clara (Calif.) Youth Village, whose best effort is 3:58. Each time the two have met, Beatty has won. Betting is high that they may soon push each other close to Australian Elliott’s world record (3:54.5).

High Jump. Boston University’s erratic John Thomas is sometimes at his best, sometimes at his worst when the competition is close. It will be closer than ever at both the N.C.A.A. and the A.A.U. meets. Southern California’s Bob Avant became the eighth 7 ft. high jumper on record in the Mt. San Antonio Relays last April in Walnut, Calif., when he scraped over the bar at an even 7 ft. Thomas, whose best jump this season is 7 ft. 2 in., was pressed hard by Avant at the Compton (Calif.) Invitational fort night ago, won at 6 ft. 10 in. only because he missed fewer times.

Pole Vault. Olympic Champion Don Bragg has a new world mark to shoot at. Oklahoma State’s George Davies bettered Bragg’s record by a full inch with a 15-ft. 10¼-in. performance last month in Boulder, Colo. Both men are sure to soar still higher.

Broad Jump. Nobody will be pushing versatile Ralph Boston very hard, but nobody has to. Just two weeks ago, the Tennessee State senior, competing in the high hurdles, the low hurdles, the high jump, the hop, step and jump, as well as the broad jump, ran up his school’s entire total of 47 points at the N.A.I.A. championships, was shaded by only 2 points by Texas Southern’s title-winning track team. Boston, who generally has to wait until Tennessee State’s girls (most notably Olympic Triple Gold Medal Winner Wilma Rudolph) finish training before he can use the track, and gets up at 6 a.m. on Sundays to work out, set two world broad-jump marks this season: indoors, with a 26 ft. 6-in. leap; outdoors, with a 27-ft. ½in. effort.

Shotput. With World Record Holder Bill Nieder no longer competing, the battle of the behemoths co-stars Veteran Parry O’Brien and Southern Cal’s 260-lb. Dallas Long. With a 64-ft. 7¼-in. heave last week. Long has come closest this year to Nieder’s 65-ft. 10-in. record.

Discus. California’s Rink Babka is anxious to make the Europe-bound U.S. team so that he can have it out with Poland’s Edmund Piatkowski, with whom he shares the world record of 196 ft. 6½ in. Babka should have no trouble, although he could be edged by 1960 Olympic Champion Al Oerter or Army Lieut. Jay Silvester, a fast-improving field man whose record-breaking throw of 198 ft. ½-in. at the Compton Invitational was disqualified because he lost his balance, stepped out of the ring by a fraction of an inch. Silvester’s second best throw this season: 194 ft. 1½-in.