Relays

College athletes last week congregated in two places--westerners in Des Moines, Ia., for the annual Drake Relay Carnival; easterners on Franklin Field, Philadelphia, for the annual Penn Relays. The latter meet was notable for no world's records. Yale took two championships-- the half-mile varsity and one-mile freshman relays. Columbia won the two-mile varsity relay. Anthony J. Plansky, herculean Georgetown Universityite, retained his decathlon championship with a new meet record of 7,169.16 points for the ten events--100-meter dash, shot-put, high jump, broad jump, 400-meter run, 110-meter hurdles, discus throw, pole vault, javelin throw, and. 1,500-meter run.

At Des Moines, the track was sodden. They soaked the cinders in gasoline and touched a match, but it rained again. Undiscouraged, Roland Locke of the University of Nebraska, "fastest U. S. sprinter," leapt from his mark and fled to a tape 100 yards away in what the second-splitting watches said was 9.5 sec.--a magical tenth of a second less than 100 yards have ever officially been run. But there had been a brusque north wind at Locke's back. The record was doubtful. The other national feature of the meet: obliging Pole-vaulter Charles Hoff of Norway soared over the bar at 13 ft. 9% in.--a new U. S. record.