FACES IN THE CROWD

Stella Walsh, 50, a spry San Fernando, Calif. track trainer who won Olympic medals in both the 1932 and 1936 Games, proved her theory on staying in condition—never get out of it—as she nimbly outran younger competitors in 11 of 12 races in her native Poland.

Chuck Gireth, 32, a nautical Los Angeles hot rodder, won fifth world championship boat drag races in Long Beach Marine Stadium with his flashy, 900-hp The Golden Thing, roaring through the quarter mile at a record 152.80 mph before 3,000 onlookers.

Jim McDermott, a 17-year-old Queens, N.Y. high school senior, led two dozen competitors through two and a half miles in winning the annual Eastern States schoolboy crosscountry race. The slim (5 feet 10, 135 pounds) runner finished 55 yards ahead of the field.

Cherie Rude, 20, a professional rider from Hinsdale, Ill., entered the American Royal in Kansas City for the first time and won the conformation hunter title aboard Front Page. A win in the stake event let her come from behind and beat favored Master's Choice.

Bud Wiget of Lakeland, Fla. won an American Power Boat Association outboard title in the C Service Hydroplane event at Bradenton, Fla. with some aid from his shore-bound wife who radioed strategic information via his specially wired walkie-talkie helmet.

Virgil Ward, a luremaker in Amsterdam, Mo., jiggled a plastic worm he designed and caught the biggest fish, a 7-pound 6-ounce black bass, in the World Series of Sport Fishing. He also out-angled 78 others to take the overall title in the five-day event in Oklahoma.

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