Trivia

[tc]

Re: Trivia

Sloman ran about 47.5 the day after his 47.0 — again wind-aided, finishing "three yards" behind Ted Meredith's 47.0 in the AAU Senior Championships. He had just completed his junior year in HS. He ran a 48.2 around one turn on October 16, 1915 in San Francisco (by far the best race of his senior season), a time equalled (by Moxley in 1928) but not bettered by a HS runner until 1939. He did not compete in either the 1915 or 1916 California State HS Championships — the first two meets in history — because his school was one of only three in the state that were not members of the federation that organized the meet. He subsequently joined the Navy and was well-known as a balloonist.

[billthedog]

Re: Trivia

Thanks, tc, for the information on Sloman. New to me. I should have known it was 1915; I assume the AAU meet was held in San Francisco that year because of the Pan Pacific Internation Exhibition. But, about straightway quarter miles: Were they unique to San Francisco? Not unique but a rarity? Not uncommon? What?

[Pego]

Re: Trivia

What did they run it on? I mean, why would anybody build a straight cinder track over a quarter mile long?

[hjsteve1.97]

Re: Trivia

>What did they run it on? I mean, why would anybody build a straight cinder
>track over a quarter mile long?


Pego, this was the ooooooold days, nothing was remotely standardized. And many running events were held on horestracks, which then, as today, were quite large.

As recently as the late 1950's, early 1960's, Riverhead High School ( Suffolk County, New York) ran all their high school meets on a 1/2 mile track. It was kinda cool to run there !

[hjsteve1.97]

Re: Trivia

gotta watch my spelling... make horestracks horsetracks.. Don't want to malign the Ladies of the Evening.

[hjsteve1.97]

Re: Trivia

reminisce time here.... even at my old high school ( Huntington, NY ) until they built a new school and track in 1959, we ran across the street from the old school in a park. The dirt track there circled 1 baseball field and one softball field, was about 30 yards longer than a quarter mile, and had a short third straightaway midway in the second turn.

[tc]

Re: Trivia

Sloman and Meredith ran their 47.0s at the Panama Pacific International Exposition racetrack (also the site of a Grand Prix auto race), built on reclaimed marshland along San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate. The track site was converted to an airfield after the Expo and later became Crissy Field, part of the Presidio. You can see a plan of the venue at http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/ppi ... cific.html.

[oneill]

Re: Trivia

I've been told that Grover Klemmer, while in HS in San Francisco in about 1940, ran a 46.3 440 on a one-way, downhill, downwind straight lay-out at the old Polo Ground in Golden Gate Park. I can't find anything to verify it, but I think that the source may have been Brutus Hamilton, who coached Klemmer (who was really really fast for that era) at UC Berkeley. He considered that Klemmer would have been an Olympic champion had it not been for the Second World War.

[tc]

Re: Trivia

Klemmer was a 440/880 runner at Galileo. His 49.5 (one-turn) to win the 1939 SF City championship was a full second better than the California State Meet winner's time (SF schools did not participate in the State Meet at that time) and remained the City record until 1958.

[oneill]

Re: Trivia

Now that I've had time to check: in 1940 Klemmer won the AAU 400 (Olympic year, although there was no Olympiad due to the war, but they ran the metric distances anyway) in 46.0, equalling the world record in the event, set by Rudolph Harbig of Germany in 1938.

Must have been quite a race. Hubie Kerns and Cliff Bourland of USC were second and third, both in 46.1, and they ran the final only an hour after the heats....imagine that in these modern times!

[dukehjsteve]

Re: Trivia

I do not have it handy, but I think Max Stiles' great " Back Track" book had a column reprint about that race. All of them were posted on this T&FN website about a year ago. Since I had lost my original copy of the paperback book, I reprinted all of them from the website.

[Per Andersen]

Re: Trivia

> He considered that Klemmer would have been an Olympic champion had it not been for the Second World War.

Well, who knows what Harbig would have done in 1940 had there not been war. He was not in the same shape he was in 1939 when he ran his 46.0. Klemmer's 46.0 took place in 1941 not 1940.

[oneill]

Re: Trivia

My guess is that Harbig would have run the 800 in 1940, and not attempted a double. Of course we'll never know. However, given the history of the Olympic 400, and the fact that Archie Williams, the 1936 champion at 400, was also from Cal and Brutus Hamilton-coached, I am inclined to think that Harbig's chances would have been better at 800, with only an easy (for him) heat to qualify and the final.

But for the Second World War, of course, we might have seen both Klemmer and Harbig in a 1944 Olympiad. Come to think of it, Hal Davis, also Cal, would have been a pretty good pick in 1944 for the 100.

Going back to what was (I think) the original topic of this "Trivia" thread, or at least one of 'em, and the Sloman/Klemmer one-way 440's both in San Francisco, I wonder that neither ever attempted a downwind (North to South) straightaway 440 or 400 on Ocean Beach?