Whowonit?

When they are good, the black-tied judges at indoor track meets look very, very good, but when they are bad--as they were two weeks ago, at the Wanamaker Mile in Madison Square Garden--they look horrid. At the Wanamaker tape the photofinish crew took a picture that showed several fat official rumps blocking the camera's view of the cat's-whisker finish between Don Gehrmann and Fred Wilt. The judges, relying on their own eyes, deadlocked 2 to 2, and Chief Judge Asa Bushnell, voting himself, declared Gehrmann the winner.

Last week, 13 days after the race, the Metropolitan A.A.U. Registration Committee reversed the judges. As the committee read the rule book, neither Chief Judge Bushnell nor a third-place judge who voted for Gehrmann had had the technical right to vote at all. That gave the Wanamaker Mile to Fred Wilt.

The decision suited Wilt. Said he: "I know I hit the tape first." Don Gehrmann, who had taken the $500 silver cup back home to Wisconsin, felt he couldn't disagree more: "I still maintain I hit the tape first and it wrapped around my neck." Since there were at least two higher A.A.U. echelons that could be appealed to, there was a good chance that the Wanamaker Mile might be running all winter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.