Physical Fitness

TED WILLIAMS was upset last weekend when only 2500 of an expected 20,000 turned out at Boston U. Field to see him perform on Ted Kennedy's so-called Physical Fitness program. He shouldn't have been. What is to be gained by watching an average, overweight retired outfielder hit a couple off retired pitcher Joe Coleman? Is that conducive to robust health?

Better for one and all if the President's younger brother had invited everybody to the Harvard-Dartmouth-Brown track meet at the Stadium across the river which was being run the same day.

There he would have seen physical fitness at its competitive best. There announcer Charlie Dale might have pointed out over the loudspeaker: "You are observing college athletes in action who are running faster than Paavo Nurmi ever did in this country; doing things that Jim Thorpe would have considered impossible and Thorpe, as you know, was acclaimed the most versatile athlete in history."

YOUNG KENNEDY's eyeballs would have popped at some of the track feats at the stadium. He would have seen Harvard's Mark Mullin win the mile in 4:11.1 with teammates Jed Fitzgerald (4:12.6) and Ed Hamlin (4:13.1) placing 2-3 . . . this in the face of a headwind that chilled cheering spectators.

These are the same Harvard boys, with Capt. Fred Howard added, who barely missed winning the four-mile relay championship at Penn. It is the most accomplished group of milers in Harvard history, probably in Ivy League history.

He would have seen Capt. Howard lowering the Harvard 880 record to 1:51.4, buoying Harvard hopes that he'll be a match for Herb Elliott come June 13.

An old-timer immediately thought of John Paul Jones, Norman Tabor, Paavo Nurmi, Ted Meredith, Bill Bingham and Bill Bonthron, and it was difficult to realize that today's collegians are running faster than those national and internationally famous milers and half-milers.

Physically fit? Never were collegians more fit.

Twilight Mile

ART FREEMAN of B. U. and Larry Rawson of B. C. will meet in a mile race at Brandeis tomorrow, and they'll be down around 4:15, as fast as Paavo Nurmi ran in the Stadium in 1925. . . . If Ted Kennedy wants an attraction he could invite those two milers to compete against Harvard's Mullin, Fitzgerald, Hamlin and Howard. Yale's Bobby Mack, IC4-A two-mile champion and a 4:10 miler, Laris and Jennison of Dartmouth, Eric Groon of Cornell and Charlie Buchta of H.C.

Let them race in the twilight at a windless Harvard Stadium and Gunder Haag's 4:05.3 mile record, set in 1943 against Gil Dodds and Bill Hulse, would more than likely go by the boards.

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THESE COLLEGE BOYS are more physically fit than their fathers or grandfathers. Track is the sport that gets them fit and keeps them fit. Russia knows it, and now France is following Russia's lead.

If the President of the United States wants a physically fit nation, he needs only to make track compulsory in schools and colleges. The coaches will do the rest. FOR FREE.

This article is presented by KIDDER, PEABODY CO.