Appetizer

Hungry for the opening of the indoor track season, 16,000 fans crammed into Manhattan's Madison Square Garden for last week's Millrose Games. They hoped for a 16-ft. pole vault, a 4:06 mile, an 8:50 two miles. They didn't get them; but they were satisfied with what they got:

> Most spectacular athlete in the U.S. is nonchalant, 27-year-old Cornelius ("Dutch") Warmerdam, a Piedmont, Calif, schoolteacher with a catlike spring in his legs. The world's only 15-ft. pole vaulter, Warmerdam has soared to that height or more 27 times in the past three years, has made fans expect a new record every time he grips bamboo. Last week the Flying Dutchman worked into the groove, nearly reaching the mezzanine with each leap. But the best he could do was 15 ft. 1 1/2 in.--a new Garden record, but 6 1/4 inches under his own world's record.

> Gilbert Dodds, bespectacled Boston Divinity student, was the surprise of last year's track season. Coming from nowhere to win the National A.A.U. championship with a 4:08.7 mile indoors and 3:50.2 for 1,500 meters outdoors, he was expected to be 1943's supermiler. But in last week's mile Dodds lost to an unrecognized challenger: Earl Mitchell, University of Indiana senior.* Trailing Dodds by some ten yards from the halfway mark until the final lap, the Hoosier then licked Dodds by four full yards in the second fastest mile (4:08.6) in 36 Millrose Games. Fastest: Chuck Fenske's 4:07.4.

> J. Gregory Rice, a pony-sized runner with a Percheron kick, is the fastest distance racer ever developed in the U.S. Despite a triple hernia that has kept him out of the services, he has won 57 consecutive races (the great Paavo Nurmi won only 50), has whittled down the indoor records for two and three miles to 8:51.1 and 13:45.7 respectively. Last week, in his first race since pulling a tendon in his heel three months ago, Rice beat his nearest rival over two miles by 55 yards. But his time was not unusual: 9:02.2.

> In the 600 the Millrose athletes came closest to a world's record. Four times in the past six years Negro Jim Herbert has romped off with this event. Last week he finished on the heels of two collegians: Georgetown's Hugh Short and Michigan's Bob Ufer. Short's winning time (1:10.2) equaled the world indoor mark.

The crowd, as good track & field crowds always do, retired with the feeling that records may be desirable, but the event is the thing.

* Not to be confused with New York University's Leslie MacMitchell, winner of last year's mile, now a U.S. Navy ensign.

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