Petkiewicz

Two months ago the Amateur Athletic Union sent out some invitations with 5-c- stamps on them. There were five of them, addressed to the governing athletic bodies of Germany, France, Italy, England and Finland, asking 14 of the greatest runners in Europe to run in the U. S. this winter. Half-miler Tavernari and long-legged Hurdler Facelli of Italy, Joachim Buchner and Harry Storz, the German quarter-milers, and Sprinter Eldracher were asked. Among Finns, the invitations went to Harry Larva and Toivo Loukola, but not, for some reason, to Paavo Nurmi who, tinkering with an old automobile in his machine-shop in Turku, shrugged his shoulders and looked hard at his work when reporters asked him whether it were true that he had been feeling sick lately. Meantime, last week, down a gangplank in Manhattan strode another athlete who had received no invitation--Stanislaw Petkiewicz of Poland.

Prosperous and slender, with light hair, big eyes, the hollow cheeks common to runners and the round skull common to Poles, Petkiewicz had journeyed over at his own expense. Runners who are being paid for by some club may only compete for 21 days, but Petkiewicz may stay as long as he likes--long enough to get used to board tracks, on which he has never contested. He studies law in the University of Warsaw. He wears a conventional grey coat, carries a sable to put on when the wind is chilly. He holds every Polish middle-distance record from 800 to 10,000 metres and last summer beat Nurmi at Warsaw, letting him set the pace and then, as others have done, passing him in the last hundred metres. In London last July he tried to beat all the best Englishmen the same day ard nearly did it. Beavers beat him at four mile and Cyril ("The Great") Ellis at a mile, principally because proud Petkiewicz tried to keep ahead of all competitors throughout each race, wasting his strength by sprinting against runners who would be used up a little further on. This was not the cool policy of Nurmi, who measures his pace with a watch and stays in front out of scorn for human competition and because he cannot or does not like to sprint.

Proud Petkiewicz is as yet inexperienced. Although insisting that he came merely to see how U. S. universities taught law, he brought his track clothes with him and immediately presented himself for recognition by the A. A. U.

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