- Publish date:
PAT ON THE BACK
JON ROBERT PEARCE
Jon Robert Pearce is an 18-year-old schoolboy from Hamilton, Ontario who may be the next Olympic sculling champion. If he is, it will be perfectly natural: his great-grandfather was Australian champion; his grandfather seven times Australian champion; his father, Lieut. Commander H. R. Pearce of the Royal Canadian Navy, was the Olympic singles champion in both 1928 and 1932. Jon, 6 feet 134 inches and 185 pounds, began to scull when he was 9. Since 1951 he has won 22 races and last August won both the junior and senior mile events and the quarter-mile dash at the Canadian National Exhibition.
JESSE OWENS
Jesse Owens is now 42 and no longer runs the 100 in 9.4 or broad-jumps 26 feet. But in the 19 years since he won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympic Games, Jesse Owens has become more than a great athlete. This month, leaving his job as secretary of the Illinois Athletic Commission, he went to the Far East on a good-will tour. Coaching and demonstrating track technique in India (below), he also won some friends for the U.S. "He used no tall words nor spoke in propagandist fashion," said the Indian Express. Said the Delhi Times of India: "Wherever he went he held his following spellbound."
TWO PHOTOS
