(2 of 4)
No country wins the Olympic Games. Officially each contest is a separate event. To consider them all as a unit and arrive at a satisfactory result would be impractical. On the Olympic program there are 22 sports, each containing numerous events, and no two nations would be likely to agree on their comparative importance. Nonetheless, to provide a convenient summary of the Games and some sort of basis for comparison, U. S. sports writers long ago invented a system of tabulation. Considering kayak-paddling the equivalent of foot-racing and awarding ten points for each first place, five for each second, four for third and so on down to one for sixth in each event, Germany had the highest number of points in the XIlth Olympic Games with 580 to 470 for the U. S.* More surprising than that the huge, populous, sport-conscious U. S. contrived to finish second was that nooks and crannies like Austria, Italy, The Netherlands and Egypt beat all rivals at canoeing, fencing, girls' swimming and weight lifting respectively.
Major event of the first week of the Games (TIME, Aug. 17) was track & field.
Last week Olympic track & field stars, including Jesse Owens who was considering a $40,000 vaudeville offer from Comedian Eddie Cantor, had scattered to compete in exhibition meets at London and elsewhere. Meanwhile, at Berlin, swimming was the plat du jour.
Csik v. Fick. In swimming, as in running, the race which attracts most attention is the 100-metre sprint. The entrant in the 100-metre who attracted most attention at Berlin last week was handsome Peter Fick of the New York Athletic Club, world recordholder, but three wily little Japanese named Yusa, Arai and Taguchi were expected to make him do his utmost.
In the bitter rivalry between the U. S. and Japan, where swimming is now No. 2 sport to baseball, no one, naturally, gave a thought to Hungary. Hungary was represented in the 100-metre final by a skinny looking youth named Ferenc Csik.
Splash! Yusa, Arai, Taguchi, Fick & Csik were in the pool. The wary Japanese watched Fick. Wary Fick watched the Japanese. Skinny Csik watched no one, kept on swimming. When the race was over, Fick and the Japanese stopped looking at each other, looked at Csik. He was the winner. Said Swimmer Fick to Swimmer Csik: "It's good I got third, at least." He was wrong again. In the confusion at the finish, judges had, perhaps erroneously, placed Fick sixth, behind not only Yusa, Arai and Taguchi but even German Helmuth Fischer.
Favored to sweep the swimming races at Berlin as they did at Los Angeles four years ago, the Japanese last week did nothing of the sort. When the six men's events were over, U. S. swimmers had won the 100-metre backstroke (Adolph Kiefer), 400-metre free style (Jack Medica). Japanese swimmers had won only three events (200-metre breast stroke, 1,500-metre free style, and 800-metre relay). U. S. victories by Dick Degener and Marshall Wayne in springboard and platform diving respectively clinched aquatic superiority for the U. S.