Scorecard

DECATHLON RECOUNT

A cry has been raised in the West against what would appear to be a discriminatory move on the part of the International Amateur Athletic Federation to devaluate the magnificent decathlon performance (9,121 points) of UCLA's C. K. Yang last spring (SI, May 6). The feeling is that the IAAF, in preparing a revision of the decathlon point scale for the 1964 Olympics, will legislate unfairly against the fiberglass pole and thereby deliberately reduce, retroactively, Yang's extraordinary score in the pole vault.

Not so. The IAAF, for some 50 years, has scanned the point allotments for decathlon performances with a view to keeping each of the 10 events in proper relation to each other and to the world level of performance in that event. The pole vault record has skyrocketed from 15 feet 9� inches to 16 feet 8 inches in less than two years on the impetus provided by the fiberglass pole; obviously, Yang's 15-foot 10�-inch effort in his world record performance is not worth as much as a 15-foot 1-inch vault on steel in the days when the record was 15 feet 9. Yet Yang was awarded 1,515 points for his vault, an astronomical figure. This defeats the purpose of the decathlon, which is, after all, to measure the all-round ability rather than unduly rewarding a man's specialty.

Man's skills and abilities change with new instruments and improvements in personal techniques, thus values in the 1,500-meter run, the 400-meter run, the broad jump, the discus and shot, among others will be scaled down, too, since the records in those events have been significantly bettered since 1952, the last time the IAAF set up new scoring tables.

The brickbats always fly when these decathlon tables come up for revision. People forget that a scoring table is a mathematical attempt to evaluate the effort and skill required of a modern Hercules as he performs his 10 labors. Actually the broad spectrum of ability tested by the two-day, 10-event program is a safeguard against any athlete getting a victory solely on excellence in one or two events. The new scoring, if adopted, will reduce Yang's total below 9,000 points. It will not, however, alter the fact that Yang, under any scoring system, is still the best all-round track athlete in the world today.

OFF LIMITS
Fearful, and justifiably so, that the gambling disclosures that shook the National Football League could just as easily happen to them, the major leagues have intensified an undercover we-can't-comment-about-it-but drive to disassociate their players, coaches and umpires from untidy elements. In at least two big league towns—Kansas City and Milwaukee—certain popular "spots" have been declared off limits, principally because they are frequented by gamblers. Two in Milwaukee figured in the NFL's investigation. Nine in Kansas City reportedly have been blackballed, including one which was visited more than once by suspended Halfback Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers when he was stationed at Fort Riley. The ball clubs are understandably reluctant to announce the names of the restaurants (or cocktail lounges), but the players know which ones they mean—or had better.

RARE BIRDMAN

Bob Allen sometimes looked like a man who had just got back from hell. His tan was a foot thick. It was hard to tell where he ended and his cigar began. He prowled such impossible places as the Canadian Northwest near Great Slave Lake and the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast, looking for—and studying—the whooping crane, rarest of birds. Often he dropped into the wilds from a helicopter. He spent months on desolate Inagua Island, southernmost of the Bahamas chain, in search of the breeding ground of the American (or West Indian) flamingo, which is a threatened species. He caught tularemia from handling an infected jack rabbit. In order to combat this and various other illnesses, some of which he contracted in the field, his doctor put him on an unusual regimen of fasting 16 hours a day. He hated an office so much that he built a roost on top of his house in Tavernier in the Florida Keys. Friends were concerned. They feared a hurricane would come someday and blow him and all his books and valuable records into the sea.

Last week Robert Porter Allen, ornithologist, winner of the John Burroughs Association Medal for conservation and former research director of the National Audubon Society, died at 58. No one can be sure what motivates a man like Bob Allen, for the love of the search and compassion for things wild are rare in a man, but if we could write his epitaph it would be to recall his fight to keep the whooping crane from being rounded up and jammed into a zoo. Preserve and protect our rare birds, said Allen, but, keep 'em flying.

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