Ten for the Show

Who is the world's greatest all-round athlete? ABC-TV and sundry promoters went through the motions of finding out last week by staging a kind of mini-Olympics called "The Superstars." Ten top professional athletes were invited to compete in any seven of ten events, excluding their specialty. In return each competitor received an $8,500 chunk of real estate in a new Florida resort community called Rotonda West and a chance at $122,000 in prize money.

The opening tennis competition set the pace. Bowler Jim Stefanich, playing the first set of his life, began by serving seven straight faults. His opponent, Elvin Hayes, the 6-ft. 9-in. pivotman for the Baltimore Bullets, had never played a set either, but managed to win 7-5 because "I've hit the ball up against a wall a lot." Quarterback Johnny Unitas confessed that "I haven't held a racket in my hand since high school," then proved it by losing 6-0 to the New York Rangers' right wing Rod Gilbert. "I thought I did pretty well," said Unitas. "At least I didn't fall down."

Boxer Joe Frazier started off the 50-meter swim with a spectacular belly flop. Furiously flailing away but going nowhere, Smokin' Joe surfaced long enough to sputter, "I quit!" Afterward, he panted: "It was like I was throwin' punches at the water and the water kept hittin' back. My big aim was to keep from drownin'." The Cincinnati Reds' Johnny Bench was a more serious competitor in the golf tournament. But two drives into a mangrove swamp erased his early lead and he finished second to Stefanich, who posted a 41 for the nine-hole event.

Bench came back to win at bowling with a puny one-game score of 131, boasting that he was taking it easy on his hapless rivals. "Why, just yesterday," he crowed, "I rolled a 629 in a three-game practice series." Tennis's Rod Laver easily won the table-tennis finals, and Hayes used his long legs to run off with first-place honors in the 100-yd. dash with a tortoise-like clocking of 11.5 seconds. After the first day of competition, though, the leader was Auto Racer Peter Revson. Winner of both the swimming and tennis events, the millionaire sportsman candidly allowed that he was in it for the money.

So was Pole Vaulter Bob Seagren. In weight lifting, the 175-lb. part-time movie actor pressed 170 Ibs. to upset Frazier, who managed only 160 Ibs. Seagren also won the half-mile run and then outlasted Frazier and Skier Jean-Claude Killy to take the one-mile bicycle race. Going against an automatic baseball pitching machine, Seagren surprised himself and Runner-up Gilbert by stroking one ball over a barrier 300 feet away. His point total was good enough to win first-place money of $39,700. Killy was second and collected $23,400; Revson and Laver tied for third and won $13,100 apiece. Of the $3,600 he collected for his last-place tie with Frazier, Unitas said: "It was fun. I didn't bother to train or anything for this. I just wanted to come down and have a good time, meet these other athletes and swap a few stories. It didn't matter to me if I won any money or not."

It mattered a great deal to Seagren. Said he: "This is the first time I've ever competed for money--legally anyway." The world-record holder in the pole vault, Seagren turned professional just two months ago but has yet to appear in the new pro track-and-field tour that is slated to start on March 3. Seagren's wife Kam was especially ecstatic about the result. "We've been eying a nice home in Los Angeles," she explained, "but our bank account hasn't matched our taste in houses. Today we bought the house."

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