To the amazement of 15,000 track fans at Madison Square Garden, the Reverend Gil Dodds* bolted straightaway into the lead. Their Iron Deacon, the greatest miler the U.S. ever produced, usually waits a lap or two before showing his heels. As he sped around the board track, his arms flailing like windmills, Dodds heard a heavy-set man in a tuxedo chanting out the time to him: "Twenty-point-five . . . twenty-two," and he knew he was running well.
It was no longer a race (his nearest foe was some 40 yds. in the rear), but a battle against the stop watch. Dodds...
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