Sport: Flying Feet

Coe and Nehemiah set records

The less than friendly rivalry between Great Britain's marvelous distance runners Sebastian Coe, 24, and Steve Ovett, 25, has become the track world's version of playing chess by mail. Each year, the two set out on separate paths through the summer track circuit, studiously avoiding head-to-head encounters while carefully selecting races where they have the best chance of breaking each other's world records. In 1979 Coe burst from obscurity by snapping the record in the mile, with a 3-min. 49.0-sec. performance in Oslo (only twelve days after setting a world mark of 1 min. 42.3 sec....

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