MEMO FROM THE PUBLISHER
A month from now, about 10 days before the start of the Olympic Games on November 22, Assistant Managing Editor Andre Laguerre, accompanied by Staff Writer Roy Terrell, Reporter Mary Snow and two photographers, will open the headquarters for the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED editorial team at the Graham Hotel in Melbourne. Staff Writer Coles Phinizy, flying from New York after the closing of November 19 Olympic preview issue, and Special Contributor Roger Bannister, flying from London on leave from medical duties, will arrive a few days later.
Laguerre's well-rounded team is strong on experts, with Terrell and Bannister on track and field, Snow on women's sports and Phinizy on both swimming and Australia itself, from which he reported last year (SI, July 25, 1955) the down under preparations for the Olympics.
As captain of the team, Laguerre is a veteran Olympics reporter. While chief of TIME Inc's Paris bureau he covered the St. Moritz Winter Olympics for TIME in 1948; while chief of the London bureau, the Helsinki Games four years later. And this year, shortly before he left his London post to join our staff, Laguerre covered the 1956 Winter Games at Cortina for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.
Even in this comparative quiet before the storm, the heads of our Australian-bound team are whirling with names, facts and figures—for, with well over 5,000 athletes from 74 countries competing in 144 events in 17 different sports, the Olympic Games are about as intricate as sports can get.
As one aid to statistical law and order, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED has put together a XVIth Olympiad Fact Wheel, which simplifies matters considerably in one of the sports this country traditionally follows most closely. Officially sanctioned by the U.S. Olympic Committee, it lists the members of this year's team in men's and women's swimming, their trial times and distances, the Olympic records for the events and a great deal of other pertinent information.
We're pretty sure that anybody who cares about the Olympics will be glad he has one. And for $1 we'll be especially glad to send you one—because your dollar will go straight to the U.S. Olympic Fund.
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