The Race Is to the Daft

It may comfort U.S. televiewers to learn that European programming has its shortcomings too. The highest TV rating in the history of Eurovision went last week to Games Without Boundaries (called It's a Knockout in Britain), a sort of Hellzapoppin' Olympics that would make Truth or Consequences seem comparatively cerebral. Yet the six-nation finals pulled more than 70 million viewers in six countries.

Over the months, the program has included such nutball events as a race in which the participants sledgehammer an upright piano into pieces that can fit into a nine-inch hole, a balloon-bursting contest with a caveman's cudgel, and a sprint in which a man mounts a Pogo stick, a girl gets on his shoulders and they hop along a greased gangplank over a pool of water.

The six national teams, of roughly 25 men and five miniskirted girls each, came from small towns in Belgium, Switzerland, France, Italy, Britain and West Germany. Earlier rounds took place in eastern Bavaria, where an elephant race was featured, and Pisa, where water polo was played in a massive tank in front of the tower. Last week the finals were staged in Bardenberg, Germany. By then the entrepreneurs had run short of ideas, so the liveliest moments came with the so-called "fruit bowl" game, in which contestants tried to break balloons by rocking up and down in an animal cutout. The German team won the $12,150 grand prize. Runner-up France received a 200-pound salami, compliments of the Bardenberg sausage industry.

Nothing exceeds like success. Eliminations within each country to determine the national entries in next sum mer's international championships will be starting shortly. And entry applications have already been received from two eager new contenders--Sweden and Spain.

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