Where the Action Is

There is no telling how far or to what trouble a vigorous TV producer will go to get a show, but this week ABC's Wide World of Sports (Sat., 5-6:30 p.m. E.D.T.) will present a program that sets a record of some sort. Having heard that the trout were biting in the Andes, Wide World packed its waders and took off for Patagonia. They drove two Jeeps and two trucks across the rising pampas to a null lake more than 200 miles from the nearest telephone.

Both in and out, it was a tough commute. A Jeep steering wheel came off. The Jeep dove into a gorge and had to be repaired with Scotch tape and fishing pliers. The governments of both Argentina and Chile, deciding that this was really a smuggling expedition, sent police along to make sure that dry flies were the only things being cast across the border.

But the trouble was worth it. The scenery was a magnificence of circumvallate mountains. The water in the lake was as clear as window glass. The trout are so big that all but the best fishermen would have to use construction cranes in stead of the usual lightweight rods. ABC had the best fishermen, two from the U.S. and two from Argentina.

The fishermen themselves do the talk ing, passing out friendly tips to the chairborne clods at home (wade like a silent Indian, watch your shadow, keep your hooks sharp). One man, using what looks like two-ton test line, demonstrates his fantastic casting skill by flicking successfully into a 50-m.p.h. gale.

Much of this will bore many people; but, of greater importance, it will not embarrass fishermen. That is why ABC's Wide World of Sports is two years old and headed into long life: it has always taken any sporting moment as seriously as the participants themselves.

Almost any sport is exciting if understood from the sportsman's point of view. Wide World has proved this with programs on dogsled races, judo and Australian-rules football. The show's interests are only partly eccentric, however; most of its attention goes to the American standards--football, basketball, baseball, track, swimming, and so on. It uses blimps and helicopters to film events like auto races--blimps to show the overall field and helicopters to swoop down and give an idea of the speed of the cars. It uses Aqua-Lungs to get under competitive swimmers and shoot them from the only angle that really shows their styles and turns. It has even adapted missile-tracking devices as one way to keep a camera trained on a sky diver falling at 160 m.p.h. And always, in any sport, the commentary is by an expert--a Stirling Moss, an Arnold Palmer, or an Art Devlin.

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