Xth Olympiad

From the huge Olympic Coliseum, with its three flagpoles, 105,000 seats and Olympic torch, the scene of the Xth Olympiad shifted last week to the 50-metre Olympic swimming pool, where 10,000 spectators with Japanese parasols sat in a small concrete stadium looking down at a narrow block of pale green water.

U. S. women swimmers have been the best in the world since they started competing in the Olympics and it was assumed beforehand that they would win four out of the five races last week. Big Helene Madison of Seattle, who was planning to retire last week after a year of setting more records than she can remember, won her two free-style races, at 100 and 400 metres, though not as easily as everyone had expected. Willy Den Ouden of Holland and Mrs. Eleanor Garrati Sayville of California paced her to a new Olympic record of 1:06.8 in the first. Lenore Right was never more than a foot behind in the 400-metre race which set a world's record (5:28.5).

Pretty Eleanor Holm of New York decided not to try for an Olympic record in the 100-metre back stroke race. Instead of steering by the row of flags over her lane, she kept her head turned to watch Philomena Mealing of Australia whom she beat by 5 ft. The one race that U. S. women swimmers have never done well in, the 200-metre breast stroke, went to a 16-year-old Australian schoolgirl, Clare Dennis of Sydney, who made an Olympic record of 3:06.4, a ripple ahead of little Hideko Maehata of Japan. An unbeatable U. S. team of Josephine McKim, Helen Johns. Eleanor Sayville and Helene Madison won the 400-metre relay in 4:38 (Olympic record).

More amazing than the prowess of the U. S. girl swimmers was the performance of several youths representing Japan. They far outclassed the U. S., whose men swimmers have won most of the events in previous Olympics. The first Japanese Olympic swimmers, competing at Antwerp in 1920, were peculiarly inept. They used an antiquated sidestroke and were anxious to learn how to do the crawl. Most Japanese athletes, other than swimmers, in the current Olympic Games have likewise been concerned with learning how to compete rather than winning prizes. Japanese skiers in the Winter Olympic Games last February amused Lake Placid school children by turning awkward somersaults over jumps and falling down even on the level. Except for Broad-jumper Chuhei Nambu who holds the world's record, Nipponese track athletes did not excel last fortnight except in courage. Schoichiro Takenaka finished the 5,000-metre two laps behind the field in a daze of exhaustion but refused to collapse until he had finished.

The first Japanese victory in the Xth Olympiad was won last week in the 100-metre free style swim, when 17-year-old Yasuji Miyazaki of Tokyo, who had set an Olympic record in his semifinal heat, won by an arm's length, with Tatsugo Kawaishi. his teammate, second.

The 700 Japanese sportswriters who had accompanied their Olympic team of 122 had a hard time thinking up unaccustomed superlatives for young Miyazaki, but they had an even harder time later in the week. Miyazaki and his three teammates from Waseda University-- Masanori Yusa, Hisakichi Toyoda and Takashi Yokoyama--made a procession of the 800-metre relay, beating the U. S. by 15 yd. in 8:58.4. or 38 sec. faster than the record. The 100-metre backstroke title which the U. S. swimmers have won since 1912 was a clean sweep for Japan, with 19-year-old Masaji Kiyokawa in first place, Toshio Irie and Kentaro Kawatsu almost tied 5 ft. behind him. In the 400-metre free style final Clarence ("Buster") Crabbe won the first men's swimming race tor the U. S. by overtaking the world's record holder Jean Taris of France in the last few strokes. Beady-eyed Tsutomu Oyokata was in third place with two more Japanese behind him. Yoshiyuki Tsuruta, 27-year-old Manchurian, barely distanced his 14-year-old compatriot, Reizo Koike, in the 200-metre breaststroke and in the 1,500-metre free-style race, climactic event of the week, two more Japanese urchins finished first and second. Little Kusuo Kitamura, 14, raced the whole distance shoulder to shoulder with his teammate Shozo Makino, 15, before he sprinted in the last two laps to win by 2 yd. in 19:14.4 --24.3 sec. under the record.

Springboard Diving. Spectators at the men's finals were amazed when they saw a small, round-shouldered man dressed in his street clothes scuttle up to the edge of the pool and flop awkwardly in. He was a German sportswriter, winning a $100 bet. Pleased, he returned to the press-box, tried to dry himself with a handkerchief while Michael ("Mickey Riley") Galitzen. tow-haired, 22-year-old law student at Southern California, won the championship with 161.58 points to 158.54 for Harold ("Dutch") Smith, who had been unable to practice for a week because of a strained stomach muscle. In the women's finals, flax-haired Georgia Coleman evened her score with little Katherine ("Minnow") Rawls who had beaten her in the Olympic trials. Jane Fauntz of Chicago piled up a lead in the compulsory routine but slipped up on a running full twist on her third voluntary dive, took third place with Minnow Rawls second.

Platform Diving. Heavily strapped with adhesive tape where she had sprained her back the day before, Dorothy Poynton still managed to beat Georgia Coleman by a comfortable point margin, 40.26 to 35.56. Her best dive was a running swan from the 10-metre platform. The men's championship was closer. This time Harold Smith took the lead, lost it twice to Galitzen, won it back before he finished his performance with a flying forward one-and-a-half somersault that gave him the championship by a fraction, 124.80 points to 124.28 for Galitzen.

Water Polo. First riot of the Xth Olympiad occurred after the first match in the water polo tournament, when Germany had beaten Brazil, 7 to 3. Angered by the decisions of the referee, huge Bela Komjadi of Hungary, two of the Brazilians crawled out of the pool and attacked him. Their teammates helped them. The Germans helped Referee Komjadi. Dr. Leo Donath of Hungary, secretary of the International Swimming Federation, tried to stop the fight. Police arrived and whacked him as well as the battling contestants. Bruised and bitter, Dr. Donath left the arena. Said Referee Komjadi: "The Brazilians have no idea of how to play water polo. ... It stands to reason that if I were to be unfair I, as a Hungarian, would be prejudiced against the Germans, our big rivals. . . ." The Brazilians were disqualified and Hungary won three games, the last one 16 to 0 against Japan, for the Olympic water polo championship. Other events:

P: Roop Singh, left inside of the Indian field hockey team, made half the goals that enabled his team to beat the U. S. 24 to 1 in the title game.

P: After winning the middleweight catch-as-catch-can wrestling championship. Ivar Johansson, Swedish policeman, took a Turkish bath instead of attending his victory ceremonies. Then, 11 lb. lighter, he won the welterweight Graeco-Roman wrestling championship. Other Graeco-Roman champions were Finnish Vaino Kokkinen, who defended his 1928 middle-weight championship; Carl Westergren, Swedish bus-driver, who won the middleweight championship in 1920, the lightweight championship in 1924, the heavyweight championship last week. P: Gymnasts competed in the Los Angeles Y. M. C. A. auditorium. Scores after five days' competition: Italy, 541.85; U. S., 522.275; Finland. 509.775.

P: Jacques Le Brun, skipper of a French monotype sloop, protested to the judges that an Italian boat had failed to give him sea room at the start of the ninth race. The judges disallowed the protest, disqualified Skipper Le Brun. He took his claim to the Olympic Protest Committee which differed with the judges, awarded Skipper Le Brun a first place that gave France the monotype championship instead of Holland, 87 points to 85. Sweden won the six-metre boat championship. The other yachting championships went to two U. S. boats--Gilbert Gray's star sloop Jupiter, Owen Churchill's eight-metre boat Angelita.

P: By hitting six different life-sized targets in the two-second finals, Major Renzo Morigi of the Fascist militia won the pistol shooting championship for Italy, with Heinrich Hax of Germany second.

P: Most exacting equestrian event in last week's Olympics was the dressage, to test the intelligence, skill and poise of horses 6 riders in 23 movements to be executed in less than 16 min. in a 60 X 20-metre arena. Commandant Francois Lesage of France won first place with his black gelding Taine, as he had at the International Dressage of Geneva last year. A jury disqualified Captain Bertil Sandstrom of Sweden for clucking to his mount (riders must use neither tongue nor whip), awarded second place to Commandant Charles Marion of France.

P: A 1,000-piece band with six drum-majors played between halves of a demonstration U. S. football game in which a team of players from Stanford, California and the University of Southern California beat a Harvard-Yale-Princeton team 7 to 6, under floodlights, in the Olympic Stadium.

P: Displeased by a decision against him, Eduardo Lopez, curly-haired Mexican fencer, flung his sword into the air. It bounced over the guard rail, injured the hand of a small boy. Dismayed, Fencer Lopez apologized, was disqualified. In the fencing team championships France won the foils and epee, Hungary the sabre.

P: An all-star lacrosse team of Canada lost the deciding game of a two-out-of-three-game exhibition series to Johns Hopkins, 7 to 4.

P: U. S. Olympic boxers won the team championship with two championships, three third places. Heavyweight champion was Santiago Lovell, Argentine Negro.

P: In the single sculls final, long-nosed Henry Robert Pearce of Australia, rowing with the quick savage stroke that won for him in 1928, built up a two-and-a-half-length lead. Five hundred metres from the finish, Bill Miller, 26-year-old oarsman of Philadelphia, pulling with a quicker swing, began to cut down the open water between the bow of his shell and the stern of Pearce's. Miller's bow was coming up even with the waist of Pearce's shell when Pearce's bow reached the finish. Last major event of the Xth Olympiad was the final heat in the 2,000-metre race for eight-oared crews, between England, Canada, Italy and the U. S. It was the race that Californians have been waiting for all year. A University of California crew won the Olympic Championship in 1928. The U. S. crew on the starting line last week was another California crew, undefeated in a season of college rowing and in the Olympic trials. Eighty thousand people along the Long Beach course saw an unforgettable finish. Coming into the last 200 metres, the bow of the California shell was a half-length ahead of Canada and England but it was even with the bow of the Italian boat. Dressed in blue shirts, pulling with the same kind of quick, hard-catching stroke that coach Ky Ebright teaches his Californians, the Italians made their bow move out ahead. With 100 metres to go, it was 3 ft. in front of California. Coxswain Norrie Graham of California backed his stroke up to 44. The 3 ft. grew slowly narrower. Twenty-five yards from the finish, it was 1 ft. At the finish, California was ahead, by the width of a hand. Canada's Leander crew was 8 ft. behind Italy, England was fourth by 6 ft. more. A crowd of 95,000 saw the Olympic Torch extinguished, the 1936 Olympic Games promised to Berlin in the ceremonies that closed the most successful modern Olympiad on record. Final point score (three points for first place, two for second, one for third): First Second Third Points United States 39 32 21 202 Italy 9 12 11 63 Japan 7 6 4 37 Sweden 9 3 3 36 France 8 4 2 34 Finland 5 5 8 33 Germany 3 10 4 33 Great Britain 4 6 5 29 Canada 2 4 10 24 Hungary 6 1 4 24 Holland 2 4 1 15 Australia 3 1 0 11 Argentina 3 1 0 11 South Africa 2 0 3 9 Austria 1 1 2 7 Ireland 2 0 0 6 Czechoslovakia 1 1 0 5 Mexico 0 2 1 5 India 1 0 0 3 Denmark 0 1 1 3 Philippines 0 0 3 3 Latvia 0 1 0 2 Switzerland 0 1 0 2 Greece 0 0 1 1 Spain 0 0 1 1 Uruguay 0 0 1 1 New Zealand 0 0 1 1 Last week's Olympics, witnessed by 1,000,000 spectators who paid $2,000,000, were the second Olympic Games held in the U. S. The first, at St. Louis in 1904, attracted few foreign competitors.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.