Athletic Ambassador

Among cold-war diplomats, the tall, loose-jointed young man was a refreshing rarity. He moved too fast (100,000 miles in five months) ever to get involved with striped-trouser protocol. Wherever he went, U.S. Olympic Champion Malvin Whitfield took off his pants and got right to work.

For Whitfield, 30, work meant running and making friends for the U.S. From Iceland to the heart of the Congo, the limber-legged Negro demonstrated the smooth style and strenuous training techniques that have won him two Olympic gold medals (at 800 meters in 1948 and 1952) and helped him set ten middle-distance marks. * Everywhere, he managed to give local runners a quick course of expert coaching, lead them through exhausting calisthenics and still had strength enough to run the legs off the fastest trackmen around. Seldom has the U.S. State Department sponsored so popular an ambassador./-

Extraordinary Fellow. Along the way, ex-Air Force Sergeant Whitfield had his troubles. In Reykjavik, at the start of his tour, he ran head-on into competition from a Russian road show. Angered because Whitfield was outdrawing them four to one, the Russians did their best to take his mind off his job; they even planted a pretty girl in the room next to his at the hotel. "She started giving me the glad eye," Mai remembers, "but I don't go for that obvious stuff. I wasn't upset at all."

About the only thing that did upset him was the greasy, garlic-filled food he ate in Yugoslavia and the hot curries of India. In Athens, Communist hecklers tried to break up one of his lectures by yelling: "Why don't you talk more about Russia?" Said Mai coldly: "I talk about a country according to its athletic standing." The lecture continued uninterrupted.

Through Nigeria and the Belgian Congo, north to Egypt, across Pakistan and India to Burma, the tireless ambassador made tens of thousands of friends. Gifts were pressed on him--a leopard skin in India, Olympic laurels in Greece, a chieftain's crown in Nigeria.

To his pleased surprise, Whitfield had his greatest success in Africa. In Kenya's capital of Nairobi, Mai talked a mixed crowd of Africans, Indians and white businessmen into shucking their shirts, trousers, shoes and socks and working out on the half-mile grass track.

"Extraordinary fellow," marveled Nairobi's fortyish mayor, Reginald Alexander. "Something like a Billy Graham of the sports world. Makes me feel like I ought to take up athletics at my time of life."

Land of Champs. Ambassador Whitfield stayed at Nairobi's best hotel (the New Stanley), to the wonder of the local "non-Europeans." Only in Northern Rhodesia was there any discrimination against him: in Lusaka jittery officials did not dare put him up at the capital's one decent hotel, found him a room with a local schoolmaster. Unruffled, Whitfield later ran through six shows. No one seemed to mind sharing the track with the Olympic champion. Would-be athletes flocked to run with Whitfield, to ask questions and to hear his advice. He usually talked about the need for selfdiscipline, the right mood ("If you're mad enough you can often win"), the right diet. That advice was not always easy to follow.

"You say an athlete needs lots of meat," said a miner in a poor Rhodesian village. "But out here our diet is mostly corn meal and vegetables. Can we become champions eating that way?" Replied Mai Whitfield with simple honesty: "No."

But everywhere people got a new view of the country that bred this champion. "If I could get all the athletes who want to train in America to come over," says Whitfield, "I could fill every university from New York to San Francisco."

Last week Whitfield came home to the States for the winter track season. For the next year he will be training diligently for the 1956 Olympics, where he hopes to earn his third gold medal. After that, if Mai Whitfield has his way, he will return to Africa. "There's so much fine physical talent wasting away there," says he. "Once those boys get better equipment and better training they'll rank high in sports. I'd like to go back and help that happen."

* World records in the 880-yd. run (1:48.6) and the 600-yd. indoor run (1:09.6), plus eight American outdoor and indoor titles.

/-During the past year, Pole Vaulter Bob Richards, Diver Sammy Lee and Hurdler Harrison Dillard have traveled from Latin America to the Orient.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.