Nurmi Beaten

It was the patent-medicine makers who first exploited those two famed individuals--"Before" and "After." "Before" was always a sorry Dick indeed, with a vague crumbling face and derelict eyes; "After" was the apotheosis of dapper, life-conquering assurance. At the Yankee Stadium, New York City, last week, Paavo Nurmi reversed the parable which has long been so excellently illustrated in the contrasting personalities of Before, of After. He appeared in his sweater of robin's-egg blue to run against Alan Helffrich in the half-mile special of the Finnish-American A. C.

A great crowd rose shouting for Nurmi, the incomparable, the undefeatable, who once ran the mile in 4:10 2/5, who has innumerable times defeated Willie Ritola, Joie Ray (TIME, July 28, Jan. 19 et seq.)--a Nurmi like the After, of the patent-medicine advertisements. While he ran, they sat voiceless, staring at a Nurmi whose legs churned up and down, whose shoulders rolled, whose chest heaved--one who unmistakably resembled that unhappy journeyman of the piles, hookworm, gallstones, liver complaint, kidney trouble, Bright's disease, lost manhood--poor Before. They saw him, with a desperate display of iron willpower, set a pace that cost him anguish and troubled not at all Runner Helffrich, who loped behind until, in the last hundred yards, he sprinted, broke the tape, gave Nurmi the first defeat he has sustained in a scratch race since he was beaten by Josef Guillemot of France in a 5,000-metre race during the 1920 Olympic Games. His time was a good five seconds slower than Ted Meredith's nine-year-old record of 1:52 1/5.

Reasons for this Waterloo were two: First, a runner, unlike a patent-medicine taker, is at his best before, not after, a long series of races. Second, Helffrich is the faster man at a short distance.

Two days later. Nurmi eluded a group of giggling women who desired to osculate his drawn cheek, waved farewell to a swarming pier-load of yelling Finnish-Americans, had his last pictures taken by U. S. cameramen, departed for Finland. On the same day, in answer to those scandal mongers who have averred that he padded his expense account, a list of his expenditures was published. He, who had been offered a professional contract of $3,000 a week, $60,000 by advertisers who wanted his endorsement, lived for six months on $1,190.