Sport: The G-Man and the Russian

The U.S. trackman rated least likely to succeed at Helsinki was a stringy (5 ft. 10 in., 145 lb.), 29-year-old FBI agent named Horace Ashenfelter. As he stood with eleven rivals at the starting line in the Olympic Stadium, he was the only American to reach the finals of the Olympic steeplechase, a punishing 3,000-meter run around a 400-meter track studded with 3-ft. barriers and a barricaded water jump.

Until the qualifying rounds began, only Ashenfelter himself would have bet much on his chances. A former Penn State distance man, and an ex-Air Force lieutenant, he had won the National Amateur Athletic Association’s 10,000-meter championship in 1950, the 3,000-meter steeplechase title the next year. But he had run the steeplechase only eight times in all before going to Helsinki. And there he was up against the world’s toughest competition: Russia’s Vladimir Kazantsev, the Soviet Union’s best bet for a gold medal in men’s track. Kazantsev was merely coasting, hinted his modest compatriots, in setting an Olympic record of 8 min. 58 sec. in the first qualifying heat.

Ashenfelter had wasted no time at Helsinki; when he was not running he was studying style and method for an event that is seldom run in the U.S. By the time he finished his qualifying heat, he had given even the Russians something to think about: a new Olympic record, seven seconds under Kazantsev’s qualifying time.

For the final round Ashenfelter got off to a bad start, still trailed the field going into the second lap. But by the third lap the G-man and the Russian were out ahead of the field. When the brass bell signaled the seventh and final lap they were still shoulder to shoulder.

In the backstretch Kazantsev strained into a two-yard lead. Then, at the last water jump, the Russian stumbled and nearly took a header. Showing the new form he had picked up from watching the Europeans practice, Ashenfelter took off from the barrier in one smooth glide, splashed on one foot near the water’s edge, swung up on the turf, then back on the track. Sailing over the final hurdle, he sprinted the last 30 yards, finished 6.2 sec. ahead of tottering Vladimir. His time: 8 min. 45.4 sec., the fastest steeplechase ever run on either side of the Iron Curtain.

Grinning happily, Steeplechaser Ashenfelter, the first American in 44 years to win an Olympic race of more than 800 meters, threw his arms around Kazantsev and Britain’s John Disley (third by a hair), then rushed into the stands to embrace his pretty wife. Next day he got a cable from J. Edgar Hoover: “ALL YOUR

ASSOCIATES IN THE FBI ARE PROUD . . .”

In the first eight days of the games, the world’s athletes had left old records littered all over Helsinki and its suburbs. Some records stood only a matter of minutes before being smashed anew. The total for 33 track & field events: 10 world and 27 Olympic records.

By the time the men’s track & field events were over, the U.S. had won 14 gold medals, the most ever collected by an ^ American team. But Russia kept on “winning” the games under the unofficial method of tallying the national showings.

At the halfway point, by rolling up huge totals in men’s and women’s gymnastics and in track & field events for women, Russia led the U.S. 496½ points to 376.

The most notable winners of the Russians and their satellites: Russia’s Nina Romaschkova, who set a women’s world record in the discus; Russia’s cylindrical female Shotputter Galina Zybina, who heaved the 8-lb. iron ball for another women’s world mark of 50 ft. 2.58 in.; Czechoslovakia’s Emil and Ingrova Zatopek, the most sensational husband & wife team in Olympic history.

On the same day that Ingrova set a women’s Olympic javelin mark of 165 ft. 7.05 in., husband Emil cracked the Olympic 5,000-meter record in 14 min. 6 sec. With a 10,000-meter record already in the bag, he entered the 26-mile marathon three days later, broke another Olympic record in 2 hrs. 23 min. 3.2 sec. to become the only Olympic athlete ever to sweep the three distance races.

Other winners of the week: ¶ The University of Southern California’s Sim Iness, one of Bob Mathias’ Tulare neighbors, setting an Olympic discus mark of 180 ft. 6.85 in., breaking the 1948 record of Italy’s Adolpho Consolini. ¶ Parson Bob Richards, who set an Olympic pole vault record of 14 ft. 11.14 in. ¶ U.S. Air Force Sergeant Mai Whitfield, who tied his own 1948 Olympic record to take the 800-meter run in 1 min. 49.2 sec., later missed his try for a second gold medal in the 400-meter run (won by Jamaica’s George Rhoden in a record 45.9 sec.).

¶ .Australia’s Marjorie (“The Lithgow Flash”) Jackson, who doubled in the 200-meter and 100-meter sprints, equaling the world 100-meter mark of 11.5 sec. ¶ Andy Stanfield, who tied Jesse Owens’ 1936 Olympic record of 20.7 sec. in the 200-meter dash to lead a U.S. sweep of the event.

¶ California’s Cy Young, who spoiled Finland’s hopes in the javelin with a throw of 242 ft. 0.79 in., breaking (by 5 ft. 6.04 in.) a 20-year-old Olympic record for the first U.S. javelin victory in Olympic history. Second: Bill Miller of the U.S. Marines.

¶ The U.S. Navy’s unbeaten crew, which chalked up the seventh straight Olympic victory for U.S. eights (the first: in 1920, also by an Annapolis crew), by a length and a quarter over Russia. ¶ Harrison Dillard, ex-Baldwin-Wallace College hurdler, who skimmed the 110-meter hurdles in an Olympic record time of 13.7 sec., closely trailed by U.S. Teammates Jack Davis and Arthur Barnard. -I Luxembourg’s Joseph Barthel, who ran the 1,500-meter “metric mile” in 3 min. 45-2 sec., an Olympic record equaled by the silver medalist, Occidental College’s Bob McMillen, clocked in the same time. The victory was tiny Luxembourg’s first in Olympic history.