Flying High

TRACK AND FIELD

Ever since Mexico City was selected five years ago as the site of the 1968 Olympics, doctors and coaches have been speculating about what the 7,350-ft. altitude will do to athletes' health and performances. With the Olympics still a month away, competing nations are trying hard to acclimatize their stars to thin air. The Russians are practicing in Mexico, the French team is going through its paces in the Pyrenees and the West Germans are heading for a training camp in Flagstaff, Ariz. It appears that there is little to worry about. Last week at Echo Summit, Calif, (alt. 7,377 ft.), where U.S. hopefuls battled it out in the final Olympic trials, track and field men put on a startling display of record breaking.

Clearly, some of the competitors would have been better off at sea level. In the 10,000 meters, for example, none of the first three finishers even man aged to equal the Olympic qualifying standard. But in most of the other events, the thin air was obviously no great hindrance. California's Geoff Vanderstock pared .3 sec. off the world record for the 400-meter intermediate hurdles. Another Californian, Jim Hines, tied the world mark of 10 sec. flat in the 100-meter dash. Army SP/4 Tom Farrell ran one of the fastest 800 me ters of the year when he was clocked in 1 min. 46.5 sec. And California's Bob Seagren soared over the pole-vault bar at 17 ft. 9 in. to break the world record by 1 1/4 in.

The 200-meter dash was the real sizzler. The third-place finisher, Stanford Graduate Larry Questad, tied Tommie Smith's world mark of 20 sec. flat. Smith himself, who finished second, was clocked in 19.9 sec. The winner: New York's John Carlos, who turns on for races by listening to soul music. He broke the tape in 19.7 sec.--a full .3 sec. off Smith's old record.

A technicality may keep Carlos' time out of the record book. Rule No. 142 of the International Amateur Athletic Federation requires that runners wear shoes with no more than six spikes. Carlos and Smith both wore new Puma shoes with soles studded with 68 needle-like spikes designed especially for the composition track that is an exact replica of the running surface at Mexico City. Questad ran in regulation shoes. And Winner Carlos insisted that he could have run 20-flat barefoot.

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