Indoor Climax

Track, like crew, is a sport in which effort never ceases. When winter comes, trackmen pull on flannel drawers, pound away on wooden tracks, move inside to practice only when snow covers the boards. Last week the pick of U. S. runners, hurlers and jumpers, including 18 world-record holders and 14 onetime Olympic team members, crammed into Manhattan's Madison Square Garden to test their training. The National Amateur Athletic Union championships, always a climax to the indoor season, this year took on 1/2added significance. Many a youngster decided to show the 100-odd, owl-faced, stiff-shirted officials that he, as well as the old standbys, deserved a trip to Berlin for the summer Olympics.

Because it was thought dangerous to have 35-lb. weights flying promiscuously around the small Garden enclosure, officials started the meet in a Manhattan armory. There a newcomer to the meet named Irving Folwartshny set a new world record of 58 ft. 1 1/2 in. To track addicts this was of small importance. Equally unexcited were they over the broad jump in which the winner fell almost 18 in. short of the record, the 1,500-metre walk in which it was so difficult to tell whether the contestants were walking or running that the judges disqualified the first two finishers for safety's sake. They were only slightly more interested when Dimi Zaitz, whose prodigious love for bananas is supposed to account for his strength, out-shotputted Champion Jack Torrance; when bespectacled Chuck Hornbostel won the 1,000-metre run.

Judiciously they saved their enthusiasm for the 1,500-metre run (120 yd. short of a mile), the contest between longtime Rivals Gene Venzke and Glenn Cunningham. Since he became the No. 1 sensation of the 1932 indoor season, Venzke, still a University of Pennsylvania undergraduate at 27, has, for the most part, played third fiddle to Bill Bonthron and Cunningham, has strangely lost none of his popularity with the crowd. Bonthron, now married, has retired until the third Princeton Invitation Meet in June.* Joe Mangan, one-time Cornell miler who defeated Cunningham last month, was recovering from influenza. These two were scarcely missed as a cheering crowd watched Venzke dodge Cunningham's heels. On the last straightaway, with 40 yd. to go, Venzke unleashed a spurt, split the tape 6 ft. in front. To Cunningham went the credit of setting so fast a pace that the winner set a new world record: 3 min. 49.9 sec. In the final track event a hawk-nosed, granite-jawed Syracuse junior, Edward ("Obie") O'Brien, furnished another thrill. When he went to Syracuse, he was a sprinter. Coach Tom Keane, developer of many a sterling quarter-miler, drew O'Brien aside, told him to forget sprinting, promised him instead the Olympic quarter-mile title in 1936. A narrow-shouldered runner whose slim legs give no clue to the drive they possess, O'Brien broke ahead of the pack at the start last week, stayed there, sprinted at the end to set a world record for the 600 metres: 1 min. 21 sec. Faithful addicts stayed to the end to see a new high in the high jump, 6 ft. 8 15/16 in., left satisfied that the U. S. will hold its own in Berlin this summer.

*Surprise-of-the-week was furnished by Princeton's Graduate Manager of Athletics. Asa S. Bushnell, who announced that this year's meet will be free, to avoid charges of track commercialization. Sportswriters, aware of the painful deficit in Princeton's athletic budget, thought the move ridiculous.

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