Champion with a Plan

At the crack of the starter's gun, Mal Whitfield broke from his crouch and eased into his power-glide stride. The four-man field in the 500-yd. race whirled around the first turn, Whitfield dead last. Then Whitfield began to pass the others, one by one, in short but conclusive bursts of speed. His theory, which has carried him to two consecutive Olympic gold medals at 800 meters: "Pass them big--then they won't try to come back to you."

Going into the last lap, Mal Whitfield had only one man ahead of him: Jamaica's Herb McKenley, world-record holder at 440 yds. Shortening his 8-ft. stride to fast-stepping six-footers, Whitfield visibly pulled himself together for the final burst. He passed McKenley "big," whirled into the final turn in front, breasted the red-yarn tape alone as the Madison Square Garden crowd of 12,364 rose to its feet and roared approval. The crowd roared again when the time was announced: 0.56.6, a new indoor record.*

The Stanislavsky Method. It is no accident that Whitfield is a champion. A keen student of track, the lean (6 ft. 1 in., 165 lbs.) California Negro works as hard at his titleholder's role as an actor who follows the famed Stanislavsky method of living the part. Working in front of a big mirror, he studies his form; after a stiff workout, he again goes to the mirror to see if his face reflects strain. He studies the opposition almost as closely. After a trial heat, when he knows he has to race the same runners again, Whitfield will turn to his closest pursuer and shake him by the hand. Whitfield admits: "I congratulate him, surely, but I study his face. How tired does he look? How much strength is there in his grip? That way I know what I've got to have to beat him the next time."

This coolly calculated approach to the opposition is duplicated in Whitfield's detachment when he looks at himself. "I learn all the time," he says. Just last summer, touring Europe after his Olympic victory, he picked up a pointer from a German trainer. The trick, which reverses standard U.S. coaching theory: go into a turn at top speed, let momentum carry you around. "It's much less tiring," says Whitfield, "and I haven't run a poor race since I learned it."

World-Record Program. "Marvelous Mal" never runs a poor race, win or lose. Fortnight ago in Boston, he equaled the world indoor record of 1:10.2 for 600 yards (TIME, Feb. 9), but his deceptively effortless stride made it appear that he could have done even better. An official criticized him for not breaking the record, accused him of not trying. Ordinarily good-natured and tractable, Whitfield later bristled: "What did he want, blood?"

Whitfield has done most of his running on special passes from the Air Force, from which he has just been discharged after nearly ten years' service, including 27 missions as a tail gunner in Korea. This season he is wearing the jersey of the Grand Street Boys' Club, an athletic and social club on Manhattan's West Side. Unable to key himself up for competition unless the stakes are of near-Olympic level, he has set himself an improbable and almost impossible goal: ten world records, indoors & out, between 440 and 1,000 yards. At 28, planning to buckle down to work in the hotel business in Los Angeles, Mal Whitfield knows that time is catching up with him. But, in the month since he announced his world-record program, his score is one down, one tied, and eight to go.

* Old record: 0:56.9, set by George Guida in 1949.

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