Sport: Can They Top This? Stick Around

Coe and Ovett take turns setting records for the mile

The war of the mile intensified last week as Britain's Steve Ovett, 25, and Sebastian Coe, 24, once more took turns shooting down one another's world records. In Zurich on Aug. 19, Coe reclaimed his record (set in 1979 and broken by Ovett in 1980), taking 27/100 sec. off the mark with a time of 3 min. 48.53 sec. Exactly a week later, Ovett announced that he wanted to go after the new record at a meet in Koblenz, West Germany. No mile event had been scheduled—its metric near equivalent, the 1,500-meter...

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