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Marathon. Japan's first big moment in the track & field events came when, Naoto Tajima won a Japanese specialty, which many athletes from other countries fail to take seriously, the hop, step & jump. Japan's second and last big moment came when a tiny Tokyo student named Kitei Son trotted calmly into the Olympic Stadium at the end of an event which many other entrants took so seriously that they could not even finish, the 26-mile marathon. Not in the least upset by his exertion, 120-lb. Marathoner Son scampered briskly down the track, broke the tape for a new record of 2 hr., 20 min., 19.2 sec. removed his shoes, trotted off to his dressing room. There, wrapped in a blanket and surrounded by Japanese journalists who wept with joy at the climax to 24 years of Japanese marathon preparation, Kitei Son amiably explained how it had happened. "Much credit for my victory must go to Mr. Harper of England. From the time we started he kept telling me not to worry about Zabala. . . . We paid no attention to him or any other runners but set our own pace. Zabala and the others went far ahead but we didn't -worry. ... I feel good now, only a little tired. Please say Mr. Harper is a very fine man for telling me about Zabala. . . ."
Defending Champion Juan Zabala, of Argentina, leader at the halfway mark, dropped out of the race when he fell back to third place a little further on. Obliging Ernest Harper finished second by 600 yd., a few seconds ahead of Son's teammate Shoryu Nan.
Women. Heroine of the 1932 Olympics was Mildred ("Babe") Didrikson, who became a professional five months later. Last week in Berlin, muscular Helen Stephens reached the climax of a career that began three years ago when her Fulton, Mo. high-school track coach chanced to glance at his stop watch as she was finishing a practice sprint. When Coach Bert Moore had assured himself that his watch was not wrong he began to train Sprinter Stephens seriously without telling her how good she was. In her first meet, at St. Louis last year, she surprised herself by breaking a U. S. record and beating Polish Stella Walsh, most famed woman sprinter in the world. Said Stella Walsh: "I can beat her any time I try."
Last week in Berlin Sprinter Stephens proved Sprinter Walsh, running for Poland under her real name of Stella Walasiewicz, wrong, by two full yards. Her time in the 100-metre final was 11.5 sec., a new record for women. When a Warsaw newspaper, with what is now a routine lack of chivalry toward female Olympic competitors, suggested that Sprinter Stephens was a man, the possibility that Sprinter Stephens' ignorance of her own abilities might include her sex was promptly destroyed by German Olympic officials. They announced that they had foreseen the dispute, investigated Sprinter Stephens before the race, found her a thoroughgoing female.