WONDERFUL WORLD OF SPORT
THE STATE ON NEW ICE
During Moscow's chill winters, almost everybody skates, but up to now no Muscovite has skated well enough to make much of a showing in international figure skating. The small morsel of femininity shown in these pictures represents a Soviet hope on ice. The 12-year-old daughter of a state map maker important enough to rate one of Moscow's better apartments, lissome Tanya Niemzova is considered by her teachers far and away the most promising of some 300 youngsters in the Soviet capital's most important school of figure skating.
Under the tutelage of veteran Russian skater Granatkina, 10 times pairs champion of the U.S.S.R., Tanya spends 12 full hours of every week practicing her figures at the rink in the Stadium of the Young Pioneers, Moscow's chief headquarters for junior sports. In addition, she goes to ballet practice twice a week to keep her muscles limber and studies music at home to perfect her sense of rhythm. Besides all this she goes to school every day from 8:30 to 2 o'clock.
Young Tanya fell in love with figure skating at the age of 6 when she saw it on the TV screen. She's been at it ever since. A bashful schoolgirl off the ice, she achieves the dignity of a mature artist when she dons her skates and puts into her figures more than a little of the moody beauty that made Russia's ballerinas great.
In Moscow contrast to a typical Hollywood mother, Tanya's parent, forbidden to superintend her young daughter's career beyond stage door, takes up her lonely, restricted vigil in an anteroom of Young Pioneers stadium, under the stern gaze of Nikita Khrushchev. Sign on closed doors warns: "Keep out during practice."
With Piquant GRACE Russia's future contender for the skating crown of Carol Heiss goes through her paces on ice and dance floor with fellow Soviet hopefuls.
COED FOOTBALL, IOWA STYLE
At the University of Iowa they have been playing tough, traditional, organization-man football for 69 years, and Saturday their organization men won, upsetting Wisconsin 20-9 (see page 14). A few days before, the disorganization girls of Iowa had their day too. Their game is officially called the Powder Bowl, but the traveling trophy is a gleaming black toilet seat. The Powder Bowl has little tradition, but it's demanding just the same. The contestants are the girls from Kappa Kappa Gamma and Delta Gamma sororities. They were coached by apprehensive brothers of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity who also provided the officiating and the half-time entertainment.
With plays that ran only to the right and a fine display of blocking and tackling (the game is supposed to be touch, but...) Delta won 12-6 to retain the seat. Voted MVP was Nancy Roberts, a blonde nursing student from Santa Monica, Calif., who called signals, including a shift where everyone swapped positions, confounded the enemy with deft ball handling on reverses and did all the passing—did it left-handed, too. Now, if the organization men's coach, Forest Evashevski, only had a pretty left-handed quarterback, too....
Sweeping end, with Nancy Roberts leading the interference, is Ginny Dunn of Columbus Junction, Iowa and Delta Gamma.
Line holds stoutly as Nancy Roberts looses a long pass. Adhesive tape designs on jeans are Greek letters delta, gamma.
Kappa Kappa Gamma pass is broken up. There were no injuries, but sore muscles altered quite a few feminine gaits.
Postgame coffee is served to Barbara Steelman, West Des Moines. The blonde, men, is Marsha Sellend of Fargo, N.D.
'THE JOY IS GONE, AND I AM TIRED'
In the great years which brought him triumph and fame on four continents, Juan Manuel Fangio husbanded his speech as carefully as he did his unique driving talent. Journalists found him gracious, unduly modest about the feats which won five world driving championships for him and bafflingly vague about his private thoughts.
Last week, confirming his long-apparent but unofficial retirement from racing, Fangio finally let down his hair. Relaxing in one of his Buenos Aires service stations, The Master, now 47, spoke candidly and with Latin intensity.
"I will never race again in the rest of my years," he said. "Champions, actors and dictators should always retire when they are at the top. But not many realize when they have reached the peak and the road ahead can lead downward only.
"Several factors prompted my decision, but above all this one: the exhilaration of racing a smooth-running car and the challenge of keeping in the lead had become drudgery—a constant effort and worry to give the people who entrusted me with their cars and money the returns they expected. The joy of the first years became mere fatigue. My body is tired, and my spirit as well.
"They were the most exciting years of my life. When I first started I never dreamed I could achieve so much. Each time we cut the finish line first it was a surprise for me. I say we and I mean the car and I, because I never considered the car as an instrument to achieve an end but as part of myself or better. At Reims in 1948, when I had to quit because my gas tank was ripped, I felt as if my own flesh was wounded. This feeling of oneness with the car and the fact that I always had luck in getting the best to drive made me a champion—far more than snappy gearshifting, lightness of touch on the steering wheel or daring curve-cutting."
Flashing one of his rare smiles, Fangio talked on:
"If I could offer the younger generation any advice, I would say, 'Never think of your car as a cold machine but as a hot-blooded horse, racing with the rider in one beautiful, harmonious unit.' As for me now, the rider has grown older and more blasé than the horse.
"But enthusiasm is not the only thing I lost. I lost my family, too. We race drivers may compete on the track, but between races we are like a big, happy family. Day in and day out, season after season, year after year, we sleep in the same hotels, eat in the same restaurants, rub elbows in the pits, sit for hours talking shop at the same bars.
"Now my family is gone. In 10 years 20 of my racing comrades have died behind the wheel. Our reunions nowadays look like gatherings of war veterans who try but cannot forget those who never came back. What is left? Money? I was born the poor son of an illiterate immigrant and now I have more money than I can use. The exhilaration of coming in first? The intoxication of cheering crowds? Until today I came in first. Tomorrow I could easily be second, then third and eventually last.
"As for the cheering crowds, I never heard them. When I race the only thing I can hear is the purring of my engine, the only thing I can see is my manager's signal from the pits. When it is over my desire is to hurry home, wash and forget all about it. The only rewarding feeling comes the day afterward, when you think over, recall and treasure each moment of trial and victory.
"When I made up my mind that this was to be my last racing year, I thought I would close with something I never did before—racing at Indianapolis. I went there and tried the track and the car assigned me, but there was no room for imagination or style. I gave up and decided that Reims, where I started in Europe, was perhaps a less glamorous but more fitting closing point for my career.
"The cycle is completed. All the great ones are gone, one way or another. It is my turn, and I trust my example will encourage the few of the old guard who remain to quit and make way for the younger drivers. To come in second behind an Ascari or a Fangio is still a triumph, but to come in second behind an unknown beginner because his young reflexes are quicker or his inexperience pushes him to take unnecessary risks can be tough for an aging champion. It will not happen to me."
Aa a champion, he was the envy and despair of his opponents, The Master.
As racing's new elder statesman, Fangio advises novices: "Think of your car as a hot-blooded horse, racing with the rider in a beautiful, harmonious unit."
THREE PHOTOS
JERRY COOKE
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JERRY COOKE
LIKE CHARY, WOULD-BE MATCHMAKERS AT STILLMAN'S GYM, SOVIET ENTERTAINMENT COMMISSION GLUMLY APPRAISES TANYA'S TALENTS AS A PEOPLE'S REPRESENTATIVE
FOUR PHOTOS
ROBERT MALONE
TWO PHOTOS
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IN THE GREAT YEARS: DRIVING A MERCEDES TO A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP...
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UNWINDING AND TALKING SHOP BETWEEN RACE DAYS, FANGIO GESTURES WITH LATIN WARMTH