Sport: Xth Olympiad

From the huge Olympic Coliseum, with its three flagpoles, 105,000 seats and Olympic torch, the scene of the Xth Olympiad shifted last week to the 50-metre Olympic swimming pool, where 10,000 spectators with Japanese parasols sat in a small concrete stadium looking down at a narrow block of pale green water.

U. S. women swimmers have been the best in the world since they started competing in the Olympics and it was assumed beforehand that they would win four out of the five races last week. Big Helene Madison of Seattle, who was planning to retire last week after a year of setting more records than she can remember, won her two free-style races, at 100 and 400 metres, though not as easily as everyone had expected. Willy Den Ouden of Holland and Mrs. Eleanor Garrati Sayville of California paced her to a new Olympic record of 1:06.8 in the first. Lenore Right was never more than a foot behind in the 400-metre race which set a world's record (5:28.5).

Pretty Eleanor Holm of New York decided not to try for an Olympic record in the 100-metre back stroke race. Instead of steering by the row of flags over her lane, she kept her head turned to watch Philomena Mealing of Australia whom she beat by 5 ft. The one race that U. S. women swimmers have never done well in, the 200-metre breast stroke, went to a 16-year-old Australian schoolgirl, Clare Dennis of Sydney, who made an Olympic record of 3:06.4, a ripple ahead of little Hideko Maehata of Japan. An unbeatable U. S. team of Josephine McKim, Helen Johns. Eleanor Sayville and Helene Madison won the 400-metre relay in 4:38 (Olympic record).

More amazing than the prowess of the U. S. girl swimmers was the performance of several youths representing Japan. They far outclassed the U. S., whose men swimmers have won most of the events in previous Olympics. The first Japanese Olympic swimmers, competing at Antwerp in 1920, were peculiarly inept. They used an antiquated sidestroke and were anxious to learn how to do the crawl. Most Japanese athletes, other than swimmers, in the current Olympic Games have likewise been concerned with learning how to compete rather than winning prizes. Japanese skiers in the Winter Olympic Games last February amused Lake Placid school children by turning awkward somersaults over jumps and falling down even on the level. Except for Broad-jumper Chuhei Nambu who holds the world's record, Nipponese track athletes did not excel last fortnight except in courage. Schoichiro Takenaka finished the 5,000-metre two laps behind the field in a daze of exhaustion but refused to collapse until he had finished.

The first Japanese victory in the Xth Olympiad was won last week in the 100-metre free style swim, when 17-year-old Yasuji Miyazaki of Tokyo, who had set an Olympic record in his semifinal heat, won by an arm's length, with Tatsugo Kawaishi. his teammate, second.