A Letter From The Publisher, Aug. 2, 1976

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"Which would you rather be," the Athenian statesman Themistocles asked 2,400 years ago, "a victor in the Olympic Games or the announcer of the victor?"

TIME'S correspondents, writers and researchers covering the 1976 Summer Olympics are obviously on the announcer's side, but some of them once had more strenuous thoughts. Staff Writer Le Anne Schreiber, who wrote the cover story, recalls the time when as a ten-year-old she hid her hair under a stocking cap and tried out for halfback on the football team of her Evanston, Ill., Catholic grammar school. "I was beating this guy out for the position," Schreiber says, "so he pulled off my cap, and the priest who was coaching the team shrieked, 'It's a girl!' and ordered me off the field." But she came on strong later as "Swivel Hips Schreiber," star running back on the girls' flag football team at Rice University. Her 50-yard near-touchdown run (she slipped three yards from the goal line) made the front page of the Houston Chronicle. In Montreal last week, Schreiber tested her speed against the former U.S. Olympic gold medalist Wyomia Tyus; after an interview, they were caught in a sudden downpour and had to race for cover. Who won? This time Schreiber is keeping the results "a deep dark secret."

Texas-born Associate Editor David Tinnin, who wrote the accompanying piece on the increasing politicization of the Olympics, was the German collegiate champion in the 100-and 200-meter sprints (in 1950 and 1952) while attending the University of Heidelberg. He had Olympic visions but opted instead for Cambridge University in England, where, he says, "I couldn't work out in summer [because the] track was built around a cricket field where 'young men running [about] in shorts' were not welcome." Tinnin approaches his subject with expertise, having just finished a book, Hit Team, which begins with the 1972 Black September attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich.

Reporter-Researcher Jay Rosenstein, a sports buff and once a member of a Navy Officers' Candidate School swimming team that he calls "the worst," did the main reporting on the Olympic action, with assistance from Stringer Bill Carroll on the gymnastics events. Ottawa Bureau Chief John Scott covered the political storms that blew up. Most of the color photographs accompanying the cover story were taken by John Zimmerman, a veteran of seven Olympics, and Rich Clarkson, for whom this was the third time around. In New York, Assistant Managing Editor Ray Cave oversaw the story, which was researched by Alexandra Rich.