Dashers

Because 100 yards happens to be about the longest distance that a conditioned athlete can run in a single burst of full speed, it has long been the most important yardstick in U. S. track sports. European sprinters dash 100 metres (109.39 yds.). Successive generations of runners have succeeded, by study as well as sinew, in whittling down the yardstick infinitesimally. In 1906 the world's record for 100 yards was set at 9.6 sec. Last May Eddie Tolan, short, spectacled Negro student in the University of Michigan, ran 100 yards in 9.5 sec. in the Western Conference championships at Evanston, Ill. Last week in Berlin the International Amateur Athletic Federation officially decided that Tolan's time was a new world's record.

It was an important decision, but it did not make much difference to curly-haired dasher Frank Wycoff of Southern California who was recently clocked over a Hundred in one-tenth of a second less than Tolan's time but whose record was too recent to be considered by the Federation last week. It did make a lot of difference, however, to swart George Simpson of Ohio State, called the Buckeye Comet, who also had turned in a time one-tenth of a second faster than Tolan's. When the Federation disallowed his record because he had made it with starting blocks, Simpson threw away his blocks and went out to practice. He said that in the 100-vard dash at the Western Conference Meet he was going to beat Tolan's world record with Tolan running behind him.

They ran the preliminaries in a driving rain at Evanston, Ill. Simpson and Tolan won their heats as expected. Simpson's time of 9.7 was one-tenth of a second faster than Tolan's. Tolan was smart, said Michigan supporters: He was not going to run his heart out in the tryouts. Let Simpson show off all he wanted to. Next day the rain cleared off but left the air cold and windy. Going to the line the runners kept their sweaters on as long as they could. As they crouched in their lanes, digging their spikes into the cinders to make the little pits that sprinters need to leap from if they do not use blocks, the raw air seemed to tighten up the muscles beneath Tolan's ebony skin. The pistol cracked. In a fraction of a second the first hunched, speed-gathering strides were over. Somehow Simpson had drawn a yard and a half in front. He was running in his famed "classic" style, his head back, his knees pumping out and up. Tolan, built so close to the ground that experts argue lack of wind resistance as one reason for his speed, was at his shoulder, but the gap stayed between them. Simpson's chest broke the tape first. His time of 9.7 sec. was "far" from the record but he got some satisfaction by beating Tolan again that afternoon by three yards in the 220.

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