From Pinsk to Prague, it was open season last week on errant Iron Curtain athletes. Cops and customs guards were putting the arm on muscular heroes for all the little illegal adventures that were once a proletarian winner's prerogatives.
Time was when Russia's light-fingered lady discus thrower, Nina Ponomaryeva, could lift a couple of hats from a London department store (TIME, Sept. 10, 1956) and rate hardly a slap on the wrist from her commissar chaperons. Nina was needed for the Olympics. But the party line has changed. Last week Czechoslovakia's table-tennis champion,...
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