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But in the 200 meters, Mel bounced back. He "boomed" the turn ahead of Ewell and then went into his float. He floated home ahead of Barney in 20.7, equaling Jesse Owens' Olympic record. In London, he would have Old Barney to worry about in addition to 1) Lloyd La Beach, 2) Harrison Dillard, who failed to qualify in the high hurdles, 3) Ion Moina, a Rumanian who has broken two European records, 4) such unknown quantities as Great Britain's MacDonald Bailey and Australia's John Treloar. The thought of it was enough to give any high-strung sprinter the frets.
Two from Jamaica. Over & beyond 200 meters, the one American who is given a chance to come through is Air Force Sergeant Mai Whitfield, the only runner who won two events at Evanston (the 400 and 800 meters). Whitfield, a Los Angeles Negro who wants to be a furniture designer, is troubled by the fact that he can't work himself into an emotional dither before a race, the way most of his teammates do. Says he: "I know it's bad, but there's nothing I can do about it."
He has to catch Jamaica's two Negro speedsters, among others. Herb McKenley, son of a wealthy West Indian doctor, has already run the 400 in the unheard-of time of 45.9 (Whitfield's best is 46.4) and has confidently announced that he will do three-tenths of a second better in London. The 800 looks tough too. Tall (6 ft. 41 in.) Arthur Wint, ex-R.A.F. pilot and son of a Jamaica, minister, has run it in 1:47—2.8 seconds faster than the Olympic record.
That Old Feeling. This week, after the best athletes of 61 nations parade past King George VI in the royal box and the "permanent" flame is lighted by a torch from Olympia, it would all be up to the legs, hearts and nerves of the athletes. As they waited, that old familiar nervous feeling began rising.
Coach Cromwell inspected Wembley's new clay track (covered until about two weeks ago by a turf for greyhound racing) and pronounced it fit for breaking records. At Uxbridge, U.S. runners jogged around the grass without removing their sweat suits, letting themselves out in a few short bursts. Cromwell was making sure that his men built themselves up gradually. At week's end, as the runners increased their training, Patton ran 200 meters in 20.6, a shade better than the Olympic record.
Mel Patton would have to run eight races in five days—a total time of about two minutes running time, with hours of leaping over mental hurdles in between. Patton, who lacks cockiness almost to the point of seeming to lack confidence, acted like a man who wished he were home. Was "the world's fastest human" afraid? He laughed: "I keep telling myself there's nothing to fear—but I got a lot more fun out of running back in high school."
*The XlVth, that is, since 1896, when the modern Olympics began. The original Olympics lasted nearly 1,200 years, from 776 B.C. until 394 A.D., when Emperor Theodosius I of Rome banned them as a pagan exhibition.
**Killed five years ago in an airplane crash near Sitka, Alaska, while a captain in the Marine Corps.
†No kin to the late General George, an Olympic competitor who came in fifth in the 1912 modern pentathlon—swimming, riding, fencing, running and shooting—at Stockholm.