The Soviet band did the best it could with the awkward, unfamiliar strains of The Star-Spangled Banner. As it played, the sellout crowd in the Green Theater of the Gorky Park of Rest and Culture cheered, and the U.S. diplomatic corps stood bareheaded in the rain. It was clear that the bulge-muscled Americans, gathered in Moscow to bandy bar bells with the burliest Russians around, were as popular a bunch of visiting athletes as had competed in Russia in many a moon.
The first Russo-American athletic contest since the end of World War II gave six U.S. musclemen of assorted sizes a...
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