Sport: Winning Ways

The famed Boston Marathon, run last week, was supposed to be the final Olympic tryout for 129 U.S. marathoners. But the man who won the 26-mi. 385-yd., up-&-downhill race was Gerry Cote, a 34-year-old policeman from St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. To celebrate his fourth B.A.A. triumph, jaunty Gerry gulped a bottle of beer and lit up a fat stogie. The Olympic marathon committee picked its three-man U.S. team from marathoners who had finished from 250 yards to 350 yards behind Canada's Cote.

¶ In the Drake and Penn Relays, the U.S. got a more encouraging Olympic preview. At Des Moines, nimble Harrison Dillard, a 24-year-old Negro, won his 55th straight race in the 120-yd. high hurdles (equaling his own Drake Relays record in 14.1). At Philadelphia, Michigan's mighty Chuck Fonville, a 20-year-old Negro, heaved the 16-lb. shot 56 feet (short of his own world's record but a new Penn Relays record).

¶ Harvard, the crew considered most likely to row for the U.S. in the Olympics, had to break a course record on Lake Carnegie, N.J. to edge out Princeton by one foot. The week before, Navy had beaten Princeton by two lengths.

¶ Russia's solemn Mikhail Botvinnik, 37, who trained for the big event by spending several weeks in a rest home, all but clinched the world's chess championship (not an Olympic sport) in Moscow's Hall of Columns. Sam Reshevsky, the U.S. champion, was running third in a field of five.

¶ At Bay Meadows near San Francisco, wrinkle-faced Jockey Johnny Longden (TIME, Dec. 8) rode his 3,000th winner on a horse named Bub. Only one other jockey, Britain's Gordon Richards (who booted home his 3,508th winner last week), has won more.

¶ Jamaica, N.Y., the East's best hope in this week's Kentucky Derby—a chestnut colt named My Request—won the $40,000 added Wood Memorial Stakes, then headed for Louisville to do battle with Calumet Farm's prize Kentucky pair, Citation and Coaltown. Running as an entry, C & C would be such odds-on favorites (about 25¢ to the dollar) that nobody could make much money betting on them—and it seemed almost foolhardy to bet against them.

CJ San Diego's Jack Graham, who has out-Caseyed Casey in the Pacific Coast League, banged a 43O-ft. home run over the right field wall in San .Francisco. It was one of four he hit that day.