Getting It All Together

At almost the exact instant the starter's gun for the Olympic marathon sounded, a fine rain began to descend. Frank Shorter, the defending champion, eased along in the pack, thinking he was in deep trouble. "I don't run well in the rain," he would say later. "I stiffen. I develop dozens of little knots."

The marathon, in effect, bracketed the final day's track and field events, beginning with a colorful horde circling the track to cheers before taking to the streets of Montreal, and finishing after the flash of the relays and high tension of the 1,500, in an irregular procession of stone-legged, haggard men. It was easy to find in these vacant, exhausted faces a symbol of how the Olympics themselves had been weakened, not by hills and wind and effort, but by the gnawing forces of politics. In the beginning, there had been notes of mourning. The IOC's ability to guarantee all its members free entry into the Games was destroyed by Canada's policy toward Taiwan, and the hopes of the African athletes were dashed by their countries' boycott of the Games. Now the Olympics were ending, teetering once more as the Soviet Union threatened to remove its team and sever all sporting contact with Canada in reaction to the defection of 17-year-old diver Sergi Nemtsanov.

Through this storm of fearful precedent the Games ran, knotted with questions about the future of international sport. The Montreal Star, in an editorial that hit the streets shortly before Shorter did, asserted the Olympics have become a "grotesque convention" of officials, diplomats and on-the-make journalists. "Let Olympism go the way of all perverted and moribund ideas," it said. "We killed most of what's good about it."

Throughout the final week of track and field, the athletes, in resounding rebuttal, spoke in the only way open to them, with world record after world record—nine in all. They established that no matter how the structure of the Games must be changed to make them again untrammeled sport, the instruments of that sport are more finely tuned than ever. They showed, too, that old dominances are gone forever, and that new ones—with the exception of the juggernaut East German women's team, which won nine of the 14 events—will be some time in arriving. Fifteen different countries had at least one gold-medal winner.

Despite the signal failures of world-record holders Dave Roberts in the pole vault and Dwight Stones in the high jump—they both took bronze medals in a downpour—the U.S. men won more medals in each category than any other nation, six gold, six silver and seven bronze, the same number they accumulated in Munich. No other country won more than two golds in the men's events, the U.S.S.R.'s total of 10 medals—three of them in the hammer—placing it second in the national sweepstakes.

It was Roberts' misfortune that, alone of the vaulters, he was obliged to make his final three attempts when the rain was heaviest, but it fell impartially on the last three competitors in the high jump. Nonetheless, Stones was evidently most affected because of his unique approach and jumping style. Despite helping the officials squeegee the puddles off the approach area, Stones was, as he said later, "slipping and sliding and hydroplaning," and he all but gave up on his last two jumps, grabbing the crossbar with his right hand as he smashed into it on his final try. "I was afraid I might break something like my knee," he said. "I decided it just wasn't worth it."

Jacek Wszola, a 19-year-old Pole, won the event at 7'4�" to join his compatriot, Tadeusz Slusarski, who took the vault at 18'�", as champions of the vertical jumps.

In the sprints, Donald Quarrie of 22 Donald Quarrie Street, Kingston, Jamaica, won the 200 meters in 20.23, completing the Caribbean sweep begun by Trinidad's Hasely Crawford in the 100. Quarrie had been second in the 100, as he concentrated on beating Valery Borzov in an adjoining lane and missed Crawford across the track. In the 200 Quarrie ran to a yard lead through the turn and withstood the charges of two young, superbly poised Americans, Millard Hampton and Dwayne Evans, who won the silver and bronze medals in 20.29 and 20.43. "No question Quarrie was the man to beat," said Hampton, out of San Jose City College and bound for UCLA. "All during the straight I tried to take him, but I knew to have a chance I had to beat him off the turn."

The whole world, and especially Baton Rouge's Fred Newhouse, would like to know how to beat Cuba's Alberto Juantorena anywhere. As did Rick Wohlhuter in the 800, Newhouse ran what seemed the perfect race against the phenomenal Cuban bull. Off fast, he presented Juantorena with the choice of running his usual slow-starting race or giving immediate chase. Juantorena let him go, and Newhouse led at 200 and on into the stretch, running lightly, in control. Juantorena came off the last turn fourth, but exploding. Showing far more strain than in his 800 romp, he went by Newhouse with 40 meters to go and won in 44.26 to Newhouse's 44.40. Businesslike Herm Frazier of the U.S. was third, in 44.95. Juantorena thus became the first man ever to pull off an Olympic 400-800 double. After dedicating his gold medal to the Cuban revolution, he said, "The race was hard and I am happy to have won. The last 50 meters was a question of fatigue. I didn't feel fatigued."

Newhouse blamed himself for that. "I should have put a little more on him early," he said. "Should have taken more of a chance." There was some consolation in the fast time. "I definitely feel this race was better than Lee Evans' 43.86 world record in Mexico City in 1968. If we had run like this at altitude, with less air resistance, it could have been somewhere around 43.0. Of course, since we only take two or three breaths in a quarter mile like this, there'd be hell to pay on the recovery."