Olympic Cavalcade

1!4 OLYMPIC CAVALCADE -the Ace of Abo mainly by the unexpe~tedness of his final challenge, for he came with a rush in the home stretch and pounded on to victory and the finishing line before Nurmi could recov:~r from the surprise which had been _sprung upon him. The race throughout had been remarkably level, -rather like the great race I saw at Helsinki a! the Sports Eestival of 1947, when - · Zatopek, of Czechoslovakia, defeatt;a V. Heino, Finland, also at 5000 -metres, run in I4 mins. 51·2 secs. as against Guillemot's time of 14 mins. 55·6 secs. of nearly thirty years earlier.-, Zatopek and Heino seemed to swop the lead so~ewhere about every hundred ya.rcl.s, but to me it looked as though the Czech was much dis– tressed and-might give up the struggle at any moment. So with the Finn and the Frenchman at Antwerp. Coming .into the finishing stretch, Ntirmi strode along, an imperturbable and apparently unconquerable automaton. As with Paavo Nurmi's pupil, protege and successor, Heino, I would have sworn that noman living could-have conquered the Finn, but from way back flashed a blue-clad, dark-skinned and dark-:.haired figure which bore ~upon its left breast the chanticleer ofF t:._a~ce. Gyiilemot, who had been run– ning literally· in Nurmi's shadow, shot past him,. and the Finn, with all his determination, could not recover the gr<?und which the Frenchman had gained in -the few yards that then separated them from the tape between the winning posts. Nurmi was, however, to-take his revenge at double the dis– tance at little later on, but of that more af!on. -_ Meanwhile; there were a series of shocks coming to the so long succ€ssful Am~ricans on the fourth day of the -games, whjch was Wednesday, 18 August. That, in fact, was a completely qead Q.ay, with ·the Stars ancl. Stripes not once mounting up the Olympic mast of victory: Very few people who were at Antwerp could, I imagine, ever have drearp€d of the defeat in the Shot Put of 'Babe' McDonald, the mighty New York p·oliceman, who had made an Olympic record of 50 ft. 4 in. at Stockholm in 1912. - A few days before the Shot Putting Fi-nal was called on, however, I was wandering round tlie trainiqg ground with ~rnie Hjertberg, tHe Swede who had returned from Ame:rica t6 his ·native land-to prepare the Swedish national team for the Vth-Olympiad. Being both field events enthusiasts, we were attracted to a group of strong·men who appeared to be putting the shot. - - - _ _, · Most prominent among this party-were two men clad in the light blue - vests bearing the white cross_of Finland. - ~ I recognized one as Nik)ander, t!Ie all-rou11a Finnish throwing expert who had stood out so prominently in the JaveHn, Discus and Shot l?u:ttin~ at . Stockholm eight years before. The oth~r--man, my friend told me, was V1lle -Porhola, one of Finland's brightest ho:ees of gaining· an Olympk medal. J watched Porhola in act-ion and after one of his puts I said to Hje! tber?, ''I'll bet you, Emie, that <::hap is goi!J-g to touch world's record, but he 11 have to learn to keep his -head up wh~n h~ parts with the shot." Hjertberg