Olympiana

P: Of the 1,500 athletes who had arrived in Los Angeles last week for the Xth Olympic Games, saddest were 69 Brazilians. They had brought with them 50,000 bags of coffee but no money. When they tried to land at Los Angeles, they were unable to pay the head tax of $1 per man. Having no radio, they learned for the first time about the Brazilian revolution. Appalled, the Brazilians set about selling coffee to pay their expenses.

P: General Manager Zack Farmer of the Los Angeles Committee announced that all seats (10,.000) for the Games' opening ceremony had been sold, that the general ticket sale, ten days before the Games started, was 1,300,000 (a record). President Avery Brundage of the U. S. Olympic Committee announced that the expense fund for the 300 members of the U. S. team--$350,000--was "far short of achievement."

P:Training at Los Angeles while he waited to see whether the International Federation would restore his amateur standing at the last minute so that he could compete with fellow Finns, pallid Paavo Nurmi hurt his leg. Dr. Paul Martin, Swiss middle distance star, pronounced it a pulled tendon, ordered complete rest for Nurmi.

P:Winner of third place on the hop, step & jump team at the final U. S. trials in Palo Alto last fortnight was Levi Casey of the Los Angeles A. C. Last week the American Olympic Committee barred Hopper Casey from the U. S. team for "reasons best known to the Olympic Committee and the athlete himself." In his place they chose Sol ("Happy") Furth, hop, step & jumper of the Millrose A. C. On his way home to Gardiner, Maine, happy Hopper Furth did not learn of his selection till he arrived. He wired the Olympic Committee for funds, promptly started back to California.

P:Biggest group housed in the 138-acre pink-&-white Olympic village (with eight running tracks, nine swimming pools, eight wrestling and four boxing arenas, two weight-lifting pavilions, one football field) were the 300 U. S. team-members. Next most numerous were 106 Japanese who arrived on the liner Taiyo Maru. Cheered by 1,000 Los Angeles Japanese, they refused to let deckhands carry their paraphernalia. Three days later, Los Angeles Germans cheered even more loudly for 104 of their countrymen who arrived in yachting caps, blue coats, white trousers. Of the 60 Mexican team-members, eight were Indian long-distance runners who carried sacks of Mexican frijoles, planned to race without shoes.

P: Of 30 or more injuries suffered by athletes waiting for the games to start at Los Angeles last week, most disastrous was the one which befell Col. Giuseppe Pirzio-Biroli, 52, captain of the Italian rifle team. He fell into a target pit while supervising practice, fractured a vertebra, had to be taken to the California hospital where physicians said he must remain, in a plaster cast, for three months.

P:Vice President Charles Curtis set out from Washington as President Hoover's substitute to open the games.

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