USA (AAU, Men)

Sprayed to a Runaway Triumph

Amsterdam Olympian William Agee ran away with the U.S. Marathon crown in Baltimore, where the asphalt was sizzling and tongues went dry as sandpaper before the pack had barely cleared the city limits. Competing on home turf, Agee enjoyed a generous dose of hometown favoritism: two motorcars flanked the mile-eater from start to finish, dousing the local darling with cold water while the rest of the field didn't get so much as a drop.

Later in life, fate dealt Agee a cruel hand, and he checked out to the great beyond by his own hand before reaching fifty.

Finland’s perennial North American road-racing fixture, Yrjö Korholin-Koski—known to the stateside sports pages as Karl Koski—padded his collection of U.S. marathon hardware with a silver medal, despite finishing a good two miles behind the frontrunner. Back in 1930, Koski had worn the winner's wreath. His countryman Ville Kyrönen, meanwhile, joined the eighty percent of the field that threw in the towel before the tape.

The marathon also served up a bit of trackside drama. Eighteen-year-old Gazella E. Weinreich stepped right up to the starting line, only to be yanked off the course by an iron-fisted decree from the AAU secretary-treasurer. The verdict was blunt and old-school: "Marathon running is no game for the fair sex." Little did the official know what the future held.

A World Mark Despite the Drizzle

A new world record in the 120-yard high hurdles had been hanging in the air all spring. Ohio State’s nineteen-year-old phenom Jack Keller had skimmed the timber in 14.3 back in early May, only to see the mark tossed out on a cockeyed technicality: he’d knocked down hurdles along the way. On top of that, both Lee Sentman of the Illinois AC and Keller had blazed 14.4 at the Big Ten meet.

Then came the Fourth of July. Towering at six-foot-five, Alabama-born Percy Beard—now wearing the winged foot of the storied New York Athletic Club—captured the national title and shaved a full two-tenths of a second off the world standard, even with a steady drizzle slicking the cinders. The stopwatch flashed a crisp 14.2. Indiana University’s James Hatfield lunged across for second in a personal best of 14.5, edging early-season sensation Lee Sentman (14.5) into third. Keller was a no-show in Lincoln. Those 14.5 clockings vaulted Hatfield and Sentman into a tie for fifteenth on the all-time ledger.

Few railbirds would have wagered their bankrolls on Beard snagging the crown and the world record. His fireworks in Nebraska came straight out of left field; prior to the Lincoln skirmish, his ledger boasted nothing louder than a small-meet victory in 14.6.

Wykoff Still the Fastest Human

The dashes followed the familiar script of the 1931 campaign: Frank Wykoff of the Los Angeles AC stepped on the gas to capture the 100-yard dash, flattening Loyola University’s Emmett Toppino. Competing unattached, five-foot-four (1.64m) pocket rocket Eddie Tolan could muster only third place, though he quickly squared accounts by pocketing the 220-yard trophy. Tolan’s 21.0 clocking stood as the season's world best—assuming, of course, that the Lincoln furlong was run around a turn. Future Olympic medalist Ralph Metcalfe, a twenty-one-year-old flyer out of Chicago, barreled in for second in the 220. These speed merchants were destined to lock horns again at the Los Angeles Games.

A red-hot 880-yard battle went to Edwin Genung of the Washington Athletic Club. He roared home in 1:52.6 to seize the world lead for the season and tie for eighteenth on the all-time list. Dark horse Otto Rosner, twenty-three, of the New York AC, trailed by more than a second. The judges nearly tore their hair out behind Genung, as the pack reshuffled wildly over the final twenty yards.

A seasoned campaigner at twenty-five who had even toured Europe in 1929, Leo Lermond claimed the mile crown. New Yorkers Gene Venzke and Frank Crowley were forced to wave the white flag in a blistering homestretch duel.

Iowa’s six-foot-three (1.90m) Ed Gordon, who had cornered the American broad-jump market all year, came up surprisingly rusty, leaving the door wide open for twenty-six-year-old veteran Alfred Bates—an Amsterdam Olympic bronze medalist flying the colors of Philadelphia’s Meadowbrook Club—to add the national title to his IC4A triumph. Gordon settled for silver.

The season's shot-put king, Herman Brix of the Los Angeles AC, defended his title with a routine heave of 15.44 (50-8). Future Olympic gold medalist Leo Sexton—a 1.93m/6-4, 109kg/240lb colossus from the New York AC who had also competed in Europe in 1929—landed his brass ball 0.24m (9½ in) short of Brix's mark.

Nor did the platter fly particularly far. 1.98m (6-4) stringbean Paul Jessup of the Washington AC, who picked up bronze in the shot, snatched the discus crown on his final spin, though his toss fell some sixteen feet shy of his own world record.

San Francisco Olympic Club’s Kenneth Churchill, who had swept the IC4A and NCAA titles with 65m (213ft) spears, couldn't quite coax the javelin past the 60m (197ft) mark this time around, leaving the nineteen-year-old with silver. Los Angeles strongman James DeMers uncorked a sharper winning throw of 64.44 (211-5). Meanwhile, the junior javelin crown was vacuumed up by Finnish-American Vaino Hoover of the Los Angeles AC—a lad who would later earn his doctorate, lecture at universities, work as an industrial mathematician, and found the Hoover Electric Co. on the side.

Mortensen Racks Up Another Monster Score

Sturdy (1.88m/6-2, 87kg/192lb) Jess Mortensen of the Los Angeles AC captured the decathlon with 8,164.225, missing the American record he had hammered out two weeks earlier (8,164.655) by less than half a point. His Lincoln tally vaulted him to third on the all-time list, trailing only Finland’s Akilles Järvinen, whose world record still stood nearly a hundred points clear of the field.

The junior championships kicked off before the big boys took the track. In the 440-yard hurdles, Eugene Beatty of Michigan State Normal College schooled the field, grinding out a 53.5 victory. Not only was it the top junior mark in the world, not a single senior runner managed to beat it all season long. Long-hurdle times in 1931 hardly set the grandstands on fire, leaving Beatty’s effort clinging to the bottom rungs of the all-time top thirty. The senior crown went to New York’s Victor Burke in a time nearly a full second slower than Beatty’s, as defending champion Dick Pomeroy of the Los Angeles AC ran out of gas after leading to the 350-meter mark and faded to second.

The Los Angeles Athletic Club hauled off the team trophy for the fourth straight time—even though scribes back home in the Los Angeles Times hinted darkly that the Lincoln officials gave every razor-thin verdict against the West Coast powerhouse.