Foreign News: The Stardom Sickness

With the possible exception of the men who make the Sputniks and a few favored fiddlers, pianists and composers, no one in the Soviet Union enjoys a more enviable lot than the men and women who break sports records. They are pampered and idolized, and, considering their perquisites, they are amateurs only by courtesy. How they behaved outside the stadiums hardly mattered so long as they continued to chalk up a satisfactory quota of victories inside. But last week, as the European championship track and field meet was about to start in Stockholm,...