PEOPLE

Now that the elections are over, voters can assess how valuable an image of fitness was to a politician by checking two results. As Election Day neared, Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes, 57, managed within a few hours to visit two bowling alleys (he rolled a strike on his first try) and three pool halls (he won two games of eight-ball) and kick a football with some schoolboys in a parking lot (a 30-yard average on 16 tries). In South Carolina, Senator Strom Thurmond, 63, did not look so athletically convincing, at least not to two of his constituents. A pair of Greenville policemen saw a man jogging between some buildings around midnight and stopped their squad car to investigate. It was the Senator, who explained he was getting some exercise by running from a TV station, where he had just made an appearance, to his hotel, a distance of three miles.

Looking over the shoulders of the Miss Teen-age America contestants was Dallas Quarterback Don Meredith (below), a judge in the annual talent competition—the Turtle Derby. After nine heats the entry of Miss Duncan, Oklahoma was declared the winner, but not before Meredith was called on to decide on a photo finish, investigate a doping case (it was said one turtle had been dipped in a stimulating soft drink) and perform an autopsy.

Since she said yes in Dr. No, Ursula Andress has been considered the sporting type. In recent films she has skin dived and skinny dipped, dangled from the wing of a flying airplane and, in her finest scene, killed her quarry with a blast from her murderform bra. Now Ursula has proved she is really a sports lover. At the opening of her beauty salon for men in Bern, Switzerland, she said, "What we will try to give men here is the athletic look. That is what girls like best, and what girls like best is what men should have."

The nickname for the French Academy—the 40 "immortals"—sometimes seems to have literal meaning, because most of the men elected to France's most learned society are doddering octogenarians. But the newest immortal, 65-year-old Nuclear Physicist Louis Leprince-Ringuet, is a vigorous athlete. He says, "Sports are essential for a person's balance." He skips lunch almost every day to play tennis and in winter keeps his balance on skis, an activity he enjoys so much that he set up his cosmic-ray detectors in the Alps.

Questioned as to why the narrator on one of its new shows was not identified, NBC officials explained that the Voice of the Dodgers, Vince Scully, is not given credit for his work on TV's Occasional Wife "because his contract with the Dodgers does not permit it." Not so, says Scully. "I thought the show might turn out to be a flop, so I asked the network not to identify me. One loser a season is enough."

The five puppies of White House beagle Freckles received all the attention last week, but they aren't the only thing new in the White House menagerie. A Bangkok zoo gave Lady Bird Johnson a rare albino turtle. Said the zoo's director: "We thought this a very suitable gift. The Thai people admire the turtle for its patience and determination and for the fact that although it is slow, it always tries to succeed in what it wants to do." Those who think Lady Bird deserved a larger present should hesitate to venture their opinions. The Thais also admire white elephants.

His competitors consider Dan Gurney safe taking a turn at 150 mph, but the California Highway Patrol has flagged him down for reckless driving. On his way to the Riverside Grand Prix, Gurney, who had been delayed by heavy Sunday traffic on the freeway, took a shortcut on a deserted country road. According to the police report, he was averaging 85 mph in his Mustang V8. A motorcycle cop and a patrol car pulled him over. This week Gurney will be arraigned in Riverside County Municipal Court. He could lose his driver's license.

When Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russia's young and famous poet, arrived in the U.S. for a six-week tour, he had a cut on his forehead, a wound received a week before when he "ran into a rock" while skin diving. A fervent athlete, he had been here little more than a day when he went to Yankee Stadium to see his first American football game, the Giants against the Cardinals. A man who draws 14,000 people to Moscow sports centers for his poetry recitations, Yevtushenko wondered if Yankee Stadium would not be a fine place for a reading. After the first quarter, in which there had been only one first down, Yevtushenko said he found the game "too slow." His 63,000 fellow spectators would certainly have agreed.

"Don't stop me," said Queen Juliana as she frolicked on the sand, her mink coat flapping. Thinking the Queen was falling, one of Rotterdam's city fathers rushed to her aid (below), but Juliana broke away and went plunging happily along during an inspection tour of Rotterdam's new $1.5 billion harbor. Meanwhile, her daughter, Princess Margriet, who is to be married in January, has invited the wedding guests to a royal skating party on the palace pond. One stipulation: "Bring your own skates."

TWO PHOTOS