Sport: Citius, Alfius, Fortius

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Time after time last week, the Royal Australian Air Force band blared The Star-Spangled Banner to signal a U.S. victory in the 1956 Olympic Games—so often that wags in Melbourne's Stadium suggested a switch to The Stars and Stripes Forever. Still, competition on the field added up to something less than a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Though the Russians fared worse than expected in the major track and field events (they good-naturedly gave Americans and others some of the two dozen victory cakes they had ordered on arrival), they scored points in almost everything they tried, and made the Games of the XVI Olympiad a lively, if unofficial, competition between the world's two chief competitors. The roaring stadium crowd of 100,000 was treated to a daily succession of sensational performances. Some of them:

Decathlon

The toughest Olympic test of all had been all but conceded to U.C.L.A.'s World Record Holder Rafer Johnson. The U.S. Navy's and Indiana U.'s Milt Campbell, runner-up to 1952 Champion Bob Mathias at Helsinki, and an even huskier broth of a boy four years later, had other ideas. "The good Lord," said Campbell, had told him to try the decathlon rather than the hurdles, and the young (23) Negro poured it on in almost every event. Only a surprisingly poor showing in the pole vault (11 ft. 1¾ in.) kept Campbell from breaking Rafer Johnson's world record of 7,985 points. But he scored only 48 points less than that, to top Mathias' Olympic mark and enthrone himself as the greatest all-round athlete in the world.

800 Meters

For most of two laps on the brick-tinted cinders, the U.S. Army's Tom Courtney and his smooth-striding teammate Arnie Sowell of Pittsburgh scrapped for the lead. "I have been trying for three years to call on some extra quality in the stretch." said Courtney later, "and 20 yards from the wire I realized this was the moment. But my legs were dead. I couldn't run. I was all in. I told myself that this was not an 800-meter race but one of 20 yards. I only had to run 20 yards—and I was panicky." By this time, Britain's Derek Johnson had sliced into the lead. A man passed so late in the 800-meter run never recovers—or almost never. Tom Courtney suddenly discovered the ultimate ounce of extra quality he had been hunting for ("Something made me catch the guy"), got back up on his toes, and strained past Johnson to set an Olympic record of 1:47.7.

5,000 Meters

For the second time. Russia's remarkable distance machine Vladimir Kuts, a 29-year-old navy lieutenant or an army captain—depending on which Russian a foreigner talks to—gave the crowd a great display of distance running, and the band an excuse to play Soyuz Nerushimy (Union Indissoluble). After outrunning and outsmarting Britain's Gordon Pirie in a 10,000-meter demonstration of brilliantly employed endurance. Kuts came back five days later to do it all over again in the equally demanding 5,000-meter race.

Shotput