RACE ACROSS AMERICA

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 205, 28 July 1928, Page 20 (Supplement)

RACE ACROSS AMERICA

EIGHTY-FOUR DAYS RUNNING

AN ATHLETIC NIGHTMARE,

SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD YOUTH WINS £OOOO. .

At New York, on the evening of May 20, fifty-five runners—men and hoy's (whites, negroes, and a h llipmo) —emerged from an athletic nightmare, finishing an eighty-four day foot race of 3421 i miles from Los Angeles hy doing two hundred laps of an indoor track at the New Garden.

Incidents of the race and the finish of the worn-out runners are vividly de.•yribed in the New Youk Herald 'lribune.

“Andrew Payne, a high school boy from Claremorc, Okla.. said to be only 17 vcars old, won 'tin 1 race ill 5/3 hours 4 minutc-s 31 seconds of running time and merited the £0250 finst P r ™ which had been offered by Mr C. O. Pyle, -the promoter, who first appeared in the professional sort business as the exploiter of Red Grange, the famous American footballer.

“The names of the next nine men to finish, together with the amount of money they will receive, were as follow: —John Salo, Passaic, K.J., second £2500: Philip Granville, Hamilton, Out., third, £1250; Mike Joyce, Cleveland, fourth, £025: Guisto Umek, •Trieste, ltalv fifth. £250: William Kerr, Minneapolis, Minn., sixth, £2o0; Louis Perellal Albany, seventh, £250; Edward Gardiner. Seattle, eighth, £250; Frank von Flue, Kerman, Cal., ninth, £250; John Cronick, Saskatoon, S--sl'- tenth, £250. SECOND MAN HOME.

“John Salo, of Passaic, N.J.. a shipfitter, born in Finland, 35 years old, and the father, of two children, was first across the finish line at the Garden and sec,ond in the as a whole. His elapsed time was SSB hours 40 minutes 13 seconds.*

“Third in elapsed time was Philip Granville, a cinamon coloured, longlegged. paddle-footed Negro, from the West indies, residing in Hamilton, Out., in 613 hours 42 minutes 30 seconds. Silo is to get £2500 and Granville is to receive £1250. “Although Mr Pvle admits having spent 100.000 dollars more than his receipts thus far. he insists that he is .solvent and able and ready to pay these prizes/ as well as £625 to Mike Joyce, of Cleveland, a sun-browned, blocky built man of about 35. who speaks with a galkegian brogue, and prizes of £250 each to the next six men in line.

NEW YORK APATHETIC

“Derided from the first announcement of Pyle’s fantastic plan six months ago until the last man had passed the'dockers’ table in the presence of the scoffing New York crowd of about. 3500. the race nevertheless will stand as one of the most heroic, if one of the most absurd, athletic contests ever held. “The spectacle of Wildfire Thompson, a lanky hill-man from an Arkansas hamlet called Bear Hollow, bounding around the Garden floor, hippetyhopping in filthy tangles with a wild tangle of whiskers trailing from his chin, was tempered somewhat by the spectacle of Henry Josephs, a tancoloured negro, sitting on the running board of his 50-dollan automobile, watching his boy. Cotton, fighting on and on through the final torture of 200 laps on a slippery cement floor. “Old man Josephs is paralysed from the waist down and his legs were awry and baggy. Another son, thirteen years .old, crossed and recrossed the infield, offering Cotton draughts from a ginger ale bottle filled with water.

Cotton is going on sixteen years old. He had run across the American continent hoping' to win some money for the family and the old man, being unable to work anyway, has assembled the £l3 to buy the car which lasted until he reached New York and then broke down on Bth Avenue.

WINNER WON’T PAY OFF MORTGAGE. For the purposes of ballyhoo it had been frequently given out on the way across the country that the Payne bo\ Anduaw, was running for money with which to pay off the mortgage of his father’s farm at Ciaremore, Okla. Rut as Andrew galloped off the last few laps, his father rebelled at all this and said the time had not come when he had to call on his boy to payoff any mortgages for him. So the synthetic pathos of the race was dispelled in the end and Old Man Josephs sitting helpless on the running board of the car which had been pushed into the Garden, as realistic scenery supplied something genuine. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said in a dull voice. “We ain’t dot a cent. The entry fee that we put up wasn’t ours. We got to give it back to the man that put it up. We haven’t got no prize. I wish 'I could get some smart publicity man to put my boy in vaudeville and make us some money. He’s only going on to 16. Even if lie didn’t win they ought to pay some money for a boy running across the country and him only going on to 16.” Eugene Germaine, a Fre.nch-Can-adian from Montreal, the first man to enter the race and the bearer of a faded No. 1 on his back, limped endlessly around the Gar/den floor, unheeded but vindicating himself with himself. His left leg, from the ankle almost to the knee was swollen to almost twice its normal size in a seizure of the malady known as shinsplint.

LEG PAINS AT EVERY STEP. This seems to bo a kind of sprain, starting in the instep and climbing the leg gradually unless relieved. Having no trainer, Germaine kept on to the end merely because he wished to be one who had crossed the continent on foot in 84 days, although the pressure of his weight on the left foot sent piercing pains up to his hip at every step. Andy Konstantin, born in S'beria and resident since then in western Canada, drowsy under an unclipped mop of hair and wearing a faded track

suit, kept oil at a vigorous walk. Out on the Arizona desert Andy developed an abscess on one thigh and was advised to quit. A self-taught surgeon operated on him at the roadside and Andy walked it off. PYLE GREETS LEADERS. Air Pyle was present in minor glory only. His contracts with the men hid been exposed as pretty greedy documents, promising them nothing and not even guaranteeing to pay the prize money, and his commissary and housing arrangements all the way had been criticised with all the bitter severity of soldiers grousing in a campaign/

As Salo and Payne came off the track he greeted them affably, congratulated them in the name of the management, and reminded them in a gentlo way that they were still under contract to perform under his management until the last dollar had been sweated out of their fame.

Red Grange, a hero of diminished statue after three seasons of the most efficient exploitation that a college athlete ever experienced, was at the track idling the last two hours .away in his nominal capacity of referee. Red had menelv lent his name to the race as an act of friendship for Pyle, he said, insisting that he had neither invested money in the promotion nor received a cent. He never was more than mildly interested in the runners and he was quite composed at the final moments when Sale brought the small crowd up cheering his sprint around Iho last lap, and Payne broke into a hustle on his last circuit of the floor. FINISHED AFTER MIDNIGHT. The runners had come over from Passaic, the last stop on the road, or an evening ferry and had jogged u through the heedless traffic of NYork on a Saturday night to the G den for their 20-mile indoor trial the presence or cash customers. Th arrived at the Garden at 8.19 air kept going until after midnight, Sat 1 finishing at 10.46. Sammy Robinson, a black boy fro in Atlantic City, who had not compilin'’ 1 , once in eighty-four days, sighed ana sank down on the stone floor as lw finished. “Man,” he said, “I’m going back to Atlantic City and stick my feet i' l the ocean and say. ‘Dogs, drink you' fill.’ Out in the desert I didn t think I’d have to catch up to ilw leaders, I -thought they’d come bars to me, blit they never did. Well. had a nice, long walk.”