Olympic Games (Concl'd)

In Lima President Oscar Benavides of Peru last week addressed an angry crowd. Said he: "I have just received cables from the Argentine, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico solidifying the Peruvian attitude against the crafty Berlin decision." The crowd, which had already torn down an Olympic flag, surged on to listen to more speeches in the Plaza San Martin. Later it proceeded to the German Consulate to throw stones at the windows until police arrived in trucks. At Callao, Lima seaport, workmen on the docks refused to load two German vessels.

The "crafty Berlin decision" concerned a soccer game. Last fortnight Peru's Olympic team won a hard match against Austria, 4 goals to 2. After the game, Austria protested that Peruvian players had manhandled them, that spectators, one brandishing a revolver, had swarmed down on the field. The International Football Federation ordered the game replayed. When the Peruvian team failed to appear, the game was awarded to Austria by default. Peru's whole Olympic team of 50 promptly decided to quit the Games. Said Michael Dasso of the Peruvian Olympic Committee: "We've no faith in European athletics. We have come here and found a bunch of merchants."

In the gigantic sporting pandemonium of the Olympic Games, of which the purpose is to promote international good will, the uproar about the Peruvian soccer team was last week's most noteworthy single item. Meanwhile, at Berlin, the Games proceeded briskly to their end.

In a cold mist at Grunau, Washington University's eight-oared crew won the gold medal by half a length over Italy and Germany in a breath-taking finish. In Berlin German gymnasts swung, spun and rolled up the impressive winning total of 657,936 points. While the International Basketball Federation, meeting to see what could be done about making the game satisfactory for the 1940 Olympics at Tokyo, vetoed a proposal to limit the height of basketball players to 5 ft. 8 in., agreed on 6 ft. 3 in., the U. S. won the Olympic title, 19-t08 against Canada. Most conspicuous in the gigantic crowds, mostly composed of provincial Germans, who stared at all these doings, was Realmleader Adolf Hitler. Suddenly become an omnivorous sports enthusiast. Herr Hitler hardly missed a day's attendance. While Hungary was defeating France in the water polo final, a persistent lady admirer from California kissed the Realmleader's cheek.

No country wins the Olympic Games. Officially each contest is a separate event. To consider them all as a unit and arrive at a satisfactory result would be impractical. On the Olympic program there are 22 sports, each containing numerous events, and no two nations would be likely to agree on their comparative importance. Nonetheless, to provide a convenient summary of the Games and some sort of basis for comparison, U. S. sports writers long ago invented a system of tabulation. Considering kayak-paddling the equivalent of foot-racing and awarding ten points for each first place, five for each second, four for third and so on down to one for sixth in each event, Germany had the highest number of points in the XIlth Olympic Games with 580 to 470 for the U. S.* More surprising than that the huge, populous, sport-conscious U. S. contrived to finish second was that nooks and crannies like Austria, Italy, The Netherlands and Egypt beat all rivals at canoeing, fencing, girls' swimming and weight lifting respectively.

Major event of the first week of the Games (TIME, Aug. 17) was track & field.

Last week Olympic track & field stars, including Jesse Owens who was considering a $40,000 vaudeville offer from Comedian Eddie Cantor, had scattered to compete in exhibition meets at London and elsewhere. Meanwhile, at Berlin, swimming was the plat du jour.

Csik v. Fick. In swimming, as in running, the race which attracts most attention is the 100-metre sprint. The entrant in the 100-metre who attracted most attention at Berlin last week was handsome Peter Fick of the New York Athletic Club, world recordholder, but three wily little Japanese named Yusa, Arai and Taguchi were expected to make him do his utmost.

In the bitter rivalry between the U. S. and Japan, where swimming is now No. 2 sport to baseball, no one, naturally, gave a thought to Hungary. Hungary was represented in the 100-metre final by a skinny looking youth named Ferenc Csik.

Splash! Yusa, Arai, Taguchi, Fick & Csik were in the pool. The wary Japanese watched Fick. Wary Fick watched the Japanese. Skinny Csik watched no one, kept on swimming. When the race was over, Fick and the Japanese stopped looking at each other, looked at Csik. He was the winner. Said Swimmer Fick to Swimmer Csik: "It's good I got third, at least." He was wrong again. In the confusion at the finish, judges had, perhaps erroneously, placed Fick sixth, behind not only Yusa, Arai and Taguchi but even German Helmuth Fischer.

Favored to sweep the swimming races at Berlin as they did at Los Angeles four years ago, the Japanese last week did nothing of the sort. When the six men's events were over, U. S. swimmers had won the 100-metre backstroke (Adolph Kiefer), 400-metre free style (Jack Medica). Japanese swimmers had won only three events (200-metre breast stroke, 1,500-metre free style, and 800-metre relay). U. S. victories by Dick Degener and Marshall Wayne in springboard and platform diving respectively clinched aquatic superiority for the U. S.

Women. Major feature of the Olympic track & field events was the performances of U. S. Negroes. Major feature of the Olympic swimming was the performances of Dutch girls. The Netherlands' equivalent of Jesse Owens and No. 2 celebrity of the Games turned out to be a ponderous 17-year-old from Rotterdam named Hendrika Wilhelmina Mastenbroek, who won both the 100 and 400-metre free style races, helped her team win the 400-metre relay. Because her pretty teammate, Dina Senff, took the 100-metre backstroke title, little Holland won every swimming event on the program except the 200-metre breast stroke which went to Japan. The high-powered U. S. swimmers got no first prizes at all.

To keep their weight down, Dutch swimmers train on beans, go in heavily for dancing. That this process is eminently successful, Dutch trainers feel to be conclusively proved by the fact that Swimmer Mastenbroek, whose hobby is cooking, weighs a mere 150 Ib. while 18-year-old Willy den Ouden, until last week rated the world's ablest girl free-style swimmer, as yet shows few signs of outgrowing her 242-lb. mother.

Netherlands' girl athletes have not yet outclassed the U. S. in events which require grace as well as brawn. Bright blonde Dorothy Poynton Hill last week retained her title at platform diving. Springboard diving championship went to Marjorie Gestring, 13-year-old Los Angeles schoolgirl.

While Holland's formidable female swimmers were winning the medals last week, the move to end the women's Olympic Games entirely or hold them far away from the men's Games gathered momentum. Major problem of the women's Olympics is determining whether or not the competitors are women. Gossip about Fulton, Mo.'s Olympic track star Helen Stephens, last week failed to produce a repetition of the embarrassment that occurred at Amsterdam in 1928 when debate about the sex of a Japanese broad jumper named Hitmoni did not end until she was ungraciously described in an official statement as "It." In Berlin famed Ted Meredith, onetime (1912) Olympic champion runner, now coaching Czechoslovakian girl athletes, related the sad case of his ablest sprinter, who qualified for the Olympics in record-breaking time, then decided to turn male. Said gloomy Coach Meredith: "I argued with her but lost the decision. She is now a male athlete. There are many cases like this in Central Europe."

Baseball. Since sport has become a major item in Nazi Germany's program of self-improvement, popularity of all sporting spectacles in Germany has jumped far beyond anything ever seen in the U. S. Berlin's 110,000-seat Olympic Stadium was packed every day of the Games, even when practically nothing was going on inside it. In the Stadium last week assembled two amateur U. S. baseball teams, one of college players, the other of members of the Pennsylvania Athletic Club, to "demonstrate" the sport. If any two such teams bothered to play in the U. S., even the families of the players would probably not find time to watch them. Germany's blind devotion to sport was emphasized last week less by the fact that this encounter was watched by a crowd of 100,000, much bigger than any that has ever witnessed the World Series, than by the fact that almost no one in it had any idea what was going on.

The game was played at night, announced by a German who did not understand it. When it was over, a Nazi baseball expert described it: "Baseball began its successful career in the countries surrounding the Pacific Ocean. Both teams appeared with nine players. The team with red stockings attacked first. . . .

"The thrower throws the ball at a certain height toward the catcher of his team against the hitters of the adverse team. The catcher must catch the ball if it is not captured by the wooden baton of the hitter. The defending team also had four men who guarded the rhombus and tackled runners, as well as three people who guard the outlying section of the rhombus in order to capture the ball for their own team.

"After three invalid throws, a player is out and the same is true if the ball is caught and also if the ball is thrown into the rhombus before he finishes his run."

*Next ten countries, according to United Press ranking for the 119 events:

Italy.................186

Sweden...........167

Hungary..........158

Japan..............153

France.............152

Finland.............145

Holland............136

Great Britain......115

Austria..............99

Canada..............55

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