Sport: For the Record

Mel Patton, the world’s fastest human, had a tail wind and he really flew. In Los Angeles last week (according to five stop watches) the slender Olympic champion (TIME, Aug. 2) covered the 100 yards in 9.1 seconds. Two other watches clocked him in an incredible 9-flat, but because of the favoring (6½ m.p.h.) breeze, neither time was allowable as a world record. Later, the breeze died and Patton sped the 220 yards in 20.2, snipping one-tenth second off the world record set by Jesse Owens in 1935.