Higher and Faster

When he set a new indoor high jump record of 6 ft. 7 in. last year it became clear that George Spitz Jr., was the best jumper in the U. S. and that he would have ample time to improve. Twice this winter he has broken his own record: at the Millrose games last month, with a jump of 6 ft. 7 3/8 in., which was questioned when the bar fell because a friend shook the track running up to congratulate him; and last fortnight at the Boston A. A. meet, with a jump of 6 ft. 8 1/2 in., a new world's record indoors and but. To see whether Spitz could officially jump 6:9, as he has often done in practice, 15,000 spectators went to the national indoor track and field championships at Madison Square Garden last week.

Spitz, now a lanky phlegmatic sophomore, who is studying at New York University to become a dentist, nonchalantly began to remove his overgarments at about the time his rivals began to have serious trouble clearing the bar. He took off his flannel trousers at 6:4, his sweatshirt at 6:5. On his feet he wore shoes of kangaroo skin, made to order, with pin spikes and crepe rubber soles, lighter than those of his confreres. Spectators noticed peculiarities in his style, occasioned by the fact that he learned to high jump without the supervision of an experienced coach, at his home in Whitestone, L. I. He circled slightly coming to the standard, kicked up with his inside foot, took off from, the outside one, and crossed the bar with his face toward it. This is an unorthodox mixture of methods. Most Eastern jumpers take off the same way, but cross the bar with their backs toward it. The Western technique is to take off from the inside foot and cross the bar looking down.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Spitz would win the event, if not a new record. At 6:4, a height at which W. B. Page barely managed to hurl himself over an old-fashioned square bar in 1888 for the first U. S. high jump record, he cleared the bar as easily as a kitten hopping across a spool. Best of the field against him was a thin coffee-colored Negro, Howard Spencer, of Geneva College, who, even more eccentric than Spitz, wore one shoe and jumped with his right foot bare. Spencer took three tries and missed before Spitz reached 6:7. Later, with the bar at 6:9, considerably higher than one of the judges could reach, Spitz tried for a record. Justifiably assisted by a little luck, as jumpers must be to break world's records, Spitz's stocky legs are some day almost sure to propel him across a bar at 6:9. They did not do so last week; his 6:7 won the championship.

Even more than to see Spitz perform his high jump, spectators at the National Championships last week wanted to see a mile race in which the overwhelming favorite was a German-American youth who, at the advanced age of 23, is a senior at Pottstown, Pa., High School. A year ago most experts would have selected Spitz as a sure member of the Olympic team but very few would have chosen Gene Venzke, a tenacious miler, seasoned in road races that develop stamina rather than speed, celebrated for a long smooth stride and a tendency to come in second. When he finally won the Columbian mile at the end of last year's indoor season in 4 min. and 14! sec., observers began to see Venzke's promise. But no one, with the possible exception of Mike Sweeney, track coach at famed Hill School and high jump champion of the U. S. in 1895, who saw Venzke run his first races when he was a 16-year-old Reading millworker and later trained him at the Hill School track, foresaw his exploits this year. In the Millrose games last month, Venzke broke the indoor record (4:12), jointly held by Paavo Nurmi and Joie Ray, by four-fifths of a second. A week later, at the New York Athletic Club meet, he ran the fastest indoor mile in history--4:10. The outdoor record is 4:091/5, held by Jules Ladoumegue of France, who would certainly have run against Venzke in the Olympics had not the French Athletic Federation last week suspended him for professionalism.

Bored with setting new records for the mile, Venzke last week contemplated winning the 1,000 yard championship instead. Later, he decided to run the mile after all, but not to try for a new record, and to enter no more mile races this season. For the last 25 years, U. S. runners have done well in sprints, poorly at middle distances and Venzke seemed fully aware of the prominence which he might acquire as an exception to this rule. Said he, before going to sleep at nine o'clock the night before the championship: "I'm sure I'll win the title but I hope they don't press me too hard in doing it. ... I've got a long ways to go yet . . . Olympics, and four years of running at college. ... I don't want to burn the motors out. . . ." Despite these assurances, the crack milers who had beaten him so handily a year ago had no desire to try again last week. There were nine other entries but only two of them--runners whose prestige could suffer nothing by defeat--appeared for the start. It was not a race, hardly even an exhibition, though the ease with which Venzke loped around the track made his pace seem slower than it was. He finished in 4:15, with one of his competitors 40 yards, and the other a lap, behind.

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