Olympic Cavalcade

LOS ANGELES, 1932 I83 McDougal, Duke of Cornwall's L.I.; America had a strong team in B. K. Brady, C. J. Mansfield and R. W. Mayo. The Modern Pentathlon consisted of five widely differing events: a Cross-country ride, Fencing with the duelling sword, Pistol Shooting, Swimming and ;;! Cross-country run. Twenty-five athletes representing I I_ different countries took part in this event, which proved to be the mosL keenly contested of all Modern Pentathlon contests. Lindman, who had- met with an accident during the voyage to America, put up a first-class average performance to gain 2nd place. It was, indeed, only the poor sc_ore he recorded in Shooting which prevented him f~om regaining his 1924 title. The defending champion, Thofelt, finished rst in both Fencing and Swimming, but was rather weak in the other three events composing the programme. Oxenstierna, who was new to this class o( competition, was 4th in Riding;' qth in Fencing, 2nd in Shooting, 5th in Swimming, but proved hims_elf a yvorthy athlete on the .last day of com– petition when he finished 7th in the Cross-country race. It sh«mld be said that the 3rd place was· gained by Mayo, U.S.A., a 1greatly improved veteran of the 1928 Games. Rowing; Great ·Britain was rep-resented in 4 out of the 7 events which were helaat the Marine Stadium-at Long Beach: the Eight~, ·th-e Coxswainless Fours, the Coxswainless Pairs and Single Sculls. Brilliant victories in the Fours and Pairs did much to make.up for the failure of the Leander Eight, · which consisted of the Cahibridge University Crew that had beaten Oxford _ in the Spr:ing. . . U.S.A., the host ·nation, won the Double Sculls, Pairs with Coxswains, and also the Eights, -besides being 2nd in Single Sculls, wpicn were won by: H. R. Pearce; Australia, while Charles Pratt and-De Mille, of Canada, were 3rd in the Double Sculls, and the Eight also took 3rd place. Great Britain (Clive and Edwards) won the Pairs without Coxswain and also theFours without Coxswain (Babcock, Beresford, Edwards and George). More than I so,ooo people - witnessed the 1932 Olympic Swimming Championships, atwhiCh both World's and Olympic records were continually being established. - All the honours ih the Springboard and Diving competitions went te· U.S.A., but Australia, Canada, Holland .and Great Britain shared with America tHe honour. of producing the world's fastest swimmers. Japan made her first major bid for Olympic honours at Los Angeles. The_Far Eastern nation produced a team of amazing boy swimmers,. most of whom were under 17 years of age. At Water Polo the Hungarians proved them– selves invincible and 'did not lose a single match. Records were broken as readily i-n the swimming bath as-by the track.. and field men in the Stadium. In many cases the three placed men surpassed. the previous Olympic record in their evenf and in the 400 metres Free Style for men all sixmnalists b~at 0e pr~vio-ys best, while a new World's