PEOPLE

On the Sunday afternoons he spends in Claremont, Calif. at his parents' home, Bob Seagren, the U.S. pole-vault champion, usually skateboards with his brother (SI, Feb. 20) on the six-mile concrete wall that runs down the side of Mount Baldy. Three weeks ago Seagren was doing a handstand on a skateboard at 30 mph when he lost control, and in the crash landing that followed he tore some muscles in his right shoulder. The following Saturday at the USC-Stanford meet he tried using cortisone to kill the pain but fell while practicing and hurt the shoulder again. Against Oregon last weekend Seagren took only one jump—15 feet 6 inches—but it was good enough to win.

The British royal family, long entertained by horses, last week invited one to the palace—St. James's, that is, not Buckingham. The purpose of the party, which honored the Grand National winner Foinavon, was to publicize a new race meeting to be held at Ascot next September for the benefit of cancer research. Three hundred guests, including the Duchess of Kent, the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl of Halifax, attended. With his royal entrée to society now established, Foinavon will make the rounds of pony shows and carnivals, drumming up interest in the charity meeting. He will be accompanied, as he was at the palace (below), by Jockey John Buckingham, his trainer, John Kempton (in hat), and his pet nanny goat.

Like so many big-league baseball players, Charlie Brown and Lucy are taking up golf, not in the comic strip Peanuts but in the privacy of San Francisco's Lake Merced Golf & Country Club. The Charlie Brown-Lucy Tournament, to be held June 8 for the benefit of the visually handicapped, is open to husbands and wives who are willing to put up the $50 entry fee per person—and put up with each other's golf. The creator of Charlie Brown, Cartoonist Charles Schulz, a five-handicapper with a backyard par-3 course of his own, says Lucy was a good golfer in the early days of the comic strip. "She was actually winning a women's tournament," he recalls, "when she had to go home to take her afternoon nap. Lucy had enough worries without golf. I decided she and Charlie Brown would suffer with baseball. I suffer with golf."

Also hooked on golf, but at considerably greater expense, is Dean Martin, who is heading a group that is building a $15 million private club in a canyon near Beverly Hills. "When we finish the job," says Golf Architect Robert Trent Jones, who has piled up almost as much money as dirt in his career, "we will be out of business. People will know we are too expensive." The floor of the canyon must be lifted and some 270 million cubic feet of earth shifted to make the 7,000-yard course. There will be four duplicate par-3 holes to eliminate delays on short holes and moving sidewalks for those among the club's swinging membership who tire easily.

It is 48 years since Avery Brundage competed in track and field events, but the 79-year-old head of the Olympics agreed to don shorts and jersey at an amateur Rugby match last week in Paris, and demonstrated his athletic prowess. He threw the discus 48 feet and worked out on the cinder track. Then he tried kicking a Rugby ball. "It's the first time I've ever touched one," he said. "I think it is a little late for me to start playing Rugby."

A marathon high-stakes poker game, which was played nightly for four months on the set of Casino Royale, had a cast that included rival James Bonds—Woody Allen and Sean Connery—Yves Montand, Lee Marvin, William Saroyan and Sidney Poitier. Keeping a poker face, Allen, whom the losers have identified as a nonloser, estimates that an average pot was $500. "We played with English pounds," says the comedian, "and it wasn't always easy to figure." He did, however, admit to buying several English suits with his winnings. How many? "Oh, you know how it is," he says, "you go to a tailor and you say 'I'll take this, I'll take that.' I really didn't stop to count."

Twelve years ago, after making the memorable catch that saved the World Series for Brooklyn, a jubilant Sandy Amoros (above) said, "Lucky, lucky, I'm so lucky." Since then, Sandy has been anything but lucky. Last Thursday he arrived in Miami on a Freedom Flight from Cuba. He was penniless, bald and 30 pounds lighter than when he played for Brooklyn. On a trip to Havana in 1962 to visit his wife and daughter, he was detained by the Cuban government and Castro drew up a contract for Amoros to manage Cuba's national baseball team. The outfielder refused. "I told them 'no' and that got them mad," he says. "They would not let me leave." His $30,000 ranch and his car were confiscated, and he could not get a job. "But I am here now, and that is good," said Sandy on his arrival in Miami. "Maybe I'll try baseball again."

Chris Chataway, who paced Roger Bannister to the first sub-four-minute mile, is a pacemaker again—this time in education. Named Leader of the Inner London Education Authority, he will supervise the curriculum of London schools. "I am opposed to the application of rigid dogma and to the imposition of uniformity," he says.

TWO PHOTOS