Raisin Records

Raisin Day at Fresno, Calif, is a typical California fiesta. Started in 1908 by California raisin growers as a promotion scheme, Raisin Day used to be a parade with floats, a cinemactor king & queen. This was replaced after 1928 by a track & field carnival started by Fresno State College in 1927. Chief characteristic of Fresno's annual West Coast Relays turned out to be a tendency toward individual performances so extraordinary that the meet's slogan became: "Where World Records Fall." This helped to make the meet the Pacific Coast equivalent of the East's Penn Relay Carnival at Philadelphia, the Midwest's Drake Relay Carnival at Des Moines.

In the first ten years of the meet's history, competitors at Fresno broke eleven world's records, tied three. Last week, they broke two more. Elroy Robinson, Merced, Calif, schoolteacher, ran 1,000 yards in 2 min., 9.7 sec.--to break the record made by Luigi Beccali of Italy in 1933. Stanford's 880-yd. relay team (James Kneubuhl, Ray Malott, Stanley Hiserman, Jack Weierhauser) scooted around the track in 1 min., 25 sec.--.8 sec. faster than the mark set by a University of Southern California team in 1927. Runner Weierhauser's tape-breaking for the world's record was not his only major feat of the day. As anchor man in the mile relay, the last event of the day, he outran University of California's Olympic Champion Archie Williams to give Stanford the ten points it needed for top score in the meet, 64 to U. S. C.'s 54 1/2, California's 40 1/2.

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