The Race Is to the Swift

INDOCHINA

Bicycle racing has been a favorite sport in Indo-China ever since it was introduced by the French soon after World War I. In years gone by, Indo-Chinese by the millions lined the roads to watch the annual, monthlong, nationwide race, and not even the herd of wild elephants that once stampeded the racers could kill their relish. But where the elephants failed, war and the Communists succeeded. In strifetorn Indo-China, big-time bike racing came to a stop in 1943.

A few months ago Viet Nam authorities, strongly backed by public opinion, decided the time had come to revive the sport on its grand old scale. Under the sponsorship of a leading Saigon newspaper and local businessmen, a seven-day race from Saigon through the Mekong Delta and back was planned. Communist leaders in the south damned the race as a capitalist attempt "to induce the youth of the nation to debauchery," and ordered their followers to sabotage it. The sponsors forehandedly asked the protection of the Vietnamese army along the route.

Last week, beneath a broiling sun, 94 cyclists got under way, followed by a motorcade of 19 sound trucks, blaring the sponsors' commercials, and a traveling variety show, to while away the time between laps. The first day's lap was uneventful. On the second day, as the race wound on through Communist-infested territory to Baclieu, Vietnamese troops stood at the ready every 100 yards along the route. Cambodian Champion Soun (he has no other name) and a Saigon policeman named Ngo Than Liem were racing well ahead of the field as they passed the town of Cantho.

Suddenly both were thrown from their bikes by an explosion in the ditch alongside the road. At the same moment, a Tommy gun chattered from a nearby hut. As the Vietnamese soldiers returned the fire, most of the cyclists, including Champ Soun, dived for the ditches, but Policeman Liem jumped back on his bike and pedaled hell-for-leather toward the finish. The only man to finish the lap, and thus win a prize of 15,000 piasters ($428), he got down from his bike and fainted dead away. "I'm no hero," he told the cheering Vietnamese fans when he came to again. "I just kept going because I was afraid there would be more explosions."

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