It's Agony, Upsets And Hopes

The track at Modesto Junior College in California 's San Joaquin Valley was very hard and very fast and, before the spikes of the runners kicked tiny pits in it, it looked like a smooth gray cement highway. As the runners fitted their feet into their starting blocks for the 100, the packed crowd quieted. Track crowds in California are mannerly and knowledgeable; they seldom stand at the end of a powerfully contested race and they sit mute at the beginning as they did for this race, matching Olympic Champion Bobby Morrow and San Jose State 's fine Ray Norton .

At the gun the field flashed out of the blocks in a multicolored surge, and in the first 20 yards, a youngster from the University of Oregon named Roscoe Cook had won the race—he was four yards in front of Morrow and Norton , and he was three yards in front 80 yards later. He ran very smoothly, his face showing little strain, his hands relaxed, and he tied the world record of 9.3 seconds.

Norton , who finished second, was watching Morrow and didn't notice the flying Cook until it was too late to do anything about it. Indeed, it was probably too late 10 yards from the blocks, so explosive was Cook's start. Morrow, who was to win the 220 later in a very creditable 20.5 seconds, finished fifth. He had worked hard for the 10 days preceding the meet, and he said later: "My legs were dead. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference anyway, but they felt dead."

Norton , although he lost the 100, showed clearly that he must be ranked now among the two or three best sprinters in the world. He closed rapidly on Texas ' Ralph Alspaugh in the anchor leg of the sprint-relay race which saw Texas set a world record of 39.6 seconds. Norton also overtook Texas ' Eddie Southern on the anchor leg of the 880 relay, running a magnificent 19.8 for the 220 yards and doing it easily and under control all the way. Now, especially in view of the misfortune which befell Morrow a week later in Houston at the Meet of Champions, Norton can claim to be the best sprinter in the country.

(The California Relays at Modesto on Memorial Day and the Compton Relays a week later, and, last Saturday, the Meet of Champions at Houston , the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championships at Sioux Falls , S. Dak., and the Central Collegiate Conference championships at Milwaukee were the final major track meetings before the climactic National Collegiate championships this Friday and Saturday in Lincoln, Neb. , and the National AAU championships on June 19 and 20 in Boulder, Colo. The AAU championships will decide the makeup of the U.S. team that will meet the Russians in Philadelphia in July.)

The two California meets—at Modesto and at Compton—produced heartening performances for American track enthusiasts. Aside from the brilliant sprinting by Cook and Norton , there was the prodigious javelin throw of Al Cantello, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Marines . Cantello broke the world record in the javelin at Compton , throwing 282 feet 3� inches on his third attempt and giving the U.S. added strength in an event where strength has not been very apparent until recently. ( Bill Alley of Kansas turned in a fine 266-foot 6-inch throw at the CCC meet.) Cantello, who attended LaSalle College during his undergraduate days, had never reached 260 feet officially before. He is a short, thick-chested athlete who has taken up weight training in the last year. "My biggest problem has always been to relax," he said after his record throw. "I guess that's the big problem most track athletes face. Doing the best you can without conscious strain."

COMING CLOSER

In the hop, step and jump, an event traditionally underplayed and understaffed in the U.S. , a pair of Americans provided hope at Modesto . Alvis Andrews, representing the Southern California Striders, set a new American record with 52 feet 5� inches; Herman Stokes, from the same club, did 51 feet 6�. This is still a couple of feet short of the world record held by Oleg Ryakhovsky of the U.S.S.R. but it indicates a growing interest in this rather esoteric event which may mean that by Olympic time, the U.S. will have contenders in this event.

In all three of these meets, in events contested by some of the finest runners in the world, the results often turned on psychological factors, or on the minutiae of training which cut off a tenth of a second in an athlete's time. Cook, the surprise winner over Morrow and Norton at Modesto , listened to Wilbur Ross, the coach at Winston Salem College, the day before his race. His starts had been poor and Ross told him to stay down longer out of the blocks instead of straightening up quickly. The result in the 100 was a 9.3.

The 440-yard run at Compton , which had been billed as a match between world record holder Glenn Davis and Texas ' Eddie Southern , who has run only a tenth of a second off Glenn's 45.7 record, was won, surprisingly, by Mike Larrabee of the Southern California Striders in a superb 46.1. Davis and Southern, in adjacent lanes, raced each other. Southern, who had never beaten Davis in a major race, hung doggedly to the Ohio State star's shoulder through the first 300 yards and Davis , trying to pull away from Southern, ran that first 300 too fast. In the one-turn race Southern and Davis were ahead of the field coming out of the turn but neither of them had anything left for the stretch run. Larrabee passed them easily, and Colorado 's Chuck Carlson passed them, too. Southern gained a modicum of satisfaction by outrunning Davis down the stretch to finish third.