Swimming Sailor

Next week husky, dusky Bill Smith will probably break some more world's swimming records, most of them his own, and become the swimmer of the year. The Navy's 19-year-old seaman 2nd class will enter every free-style race from 100 yds. to half a mile at the National A.A.U. championships at the University of Michigan. Very likely he will win them all.

Bill Smith's principal opponent will be Yaleman Alan Ford (TIME, Feb. 8, 1943). Last week Sprinter Ford became the first man in history to swim 100 yds. in under 50 seconds in a regular-sized pool. He drenched his own world's record with 49.7. But at longer distances, Smith looks like the better swimmer. He holds 23 world's free-style records, from 2:07.1 for 220 yds. to 18:03.8 for 1,400 meters. He also is anchor man on the Great Lakes Naval Training Station relay team that holds three more world's records.

Bill Smith's father, a Honolulu policeman, is Irish-Hawaiian; his mother is English-Hawaiian. Bill did not start swimming in earnest until he was ten, when typhoid fever left him unable to walk. A coming Hawaiian swimming star, he saw the bombing of Pearl Harbor from his home porch, seven miles from the base.

A year ago last fall Bill entered Ohio State and paced the team. Last spring he enlisted in the Navy. At Great Lakes, he is one of 60 instructors giving daily swimming lessons to 32,000 landlubbing recruits. His commanding officer, Lieut. Walter N. Colbath, 1928 Olympic diver and roommate of Johnny Weissmuller, has no time for coaching. But he has watched Smith enough to state flatly that he is "a hell of a lot faster than Weissmuller in any event."

Bill has not been in a bathtub in ten years. "It's too crowded," he explains. "You can't move around."

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