PEOPLE
Is this the shape of things to come? The Granna soccer team of Sweden had a most successful season in 1971 and was expecting an even better one this year, when the entire midfield got pregnant, knocking the team out of title contention. Here they arc: Britt Marie Andersson, Siv Gronvall, Anna Carin Sward and Ann-Katrin Hallstrand—and somewhere out there in cliché-land is a coach who is going to say, "Sometimes you lose a mid-field, sometimes you gain one."
The University of Alabama has a football player on its roster, Bob Holmes, who is rather rectangular in shape and runs the 40 in approximately 28 seconds. He is called, naturally, "Mobile" Holmes.
Bad enough in this age of sky pirates that track and football officials are unable to fly to events with their pistols. Now the air carriers get a case of the flutters when this nice woman carrying two bows and a quiver full of arrows tries to board their planes. She is Olympic archery champion Doreen Wilber, a 42-year-old housewife from Jefferson, Iowa, and she has to park her arrows in a locked luggage compartment. We can hear the heist now: "I'm Maid Marian. Fly me to Sherwood Forest."
On what might be considered by some the wrong side of the camera, Swedish Actress Mai Zetterling filmed the weight-lifting portion of the Olympics, which she found "both absurd and fascinating. It is not certain the weight lifters will like it," Miss Zetterling admits. "I'm not the least interested in sports or weight lifting. I'm interested in obsessions."
Tap-dancing Movie Actress Ann Miller has little choice about how to keep fit. It has to be golf. "I have a whole closet full of clubs," she says. "I've been married three times and it seems that with every divorce, he gets the club membership and I get the clubs."
In a first which he hopes will be a last, Jackie Stewart drove his wife Helen around France's Ricard-Castellet Circuit in a Capri at race speed. "She insisted on speed despite wet conditions, and got it—150 miles an hour," Stewart says. "Now she wants to go round in a 190-mile-an-hour sports car. I hope it stops at that."
Pete Maravich, who used to possess no defensive skills, has one now—karate. "It wasn't much fun learning," Maravich says, "but there are a lot of things that can be applied to basketball." Oh.
Stanford Athletic Director Joe Ruetz, embroiled in controversy with genuine Indians over the racial implications of the school's nickname, can take comfort. What must be the most denigrating of all such names goes back to 1910 and Yuma (Ariz.) High School, then housed atop the main building of Yuma Prison. Its teams are known as the Yuma Criminals.
Mayor Geoffrey Dobson of Cleckheaton, England has agreed to open a nudist swimming tournament by throwing in the first body, his own, and naked, too. "I would rather swim in the nude for these people than open a cinema showing sex films," Mayor Dobson said, which may explain why he did not show up for the Hippie Sex Olympics, three days of nude athletic events sponsored by the Church of Aphrodite. The C of A predicted a million participants at the Great Park near Windsor Castle. Six hundred policemen were assigned to, uh, cover the event, which they did amply, far outnumbering the athletes.
When Sprinter Rey Robinson—disqualified from the Olympic 100-meter dash for showing up late for his heat—returned to his hometown of Lakeland, Fla., a press conference was scheduled. Robinson was five minutes late.
The best matchup in the New Year's Day bowl games is already assured. John Wayne will be grand marshal of the Rose Bowl parade. Also attending will be Big Ten Commissioner Wayne Duke. Somewhere, sometime, someone is going to have to introduce Wayne Duke to Duke Wayne.
Groovy. Cleveland Broadcaster Mike Kelly has become the leading jockey on the continent's biggest disc. Up on the 15-story-high Ferris wheel at Cedar Point, Ohio amusement park, Kelly spun for 21 days, three hours and 58 minutes—11,000 revolutions in all—easily surpassing the old track record set by Pogo Poge of Honolulu.
Intending to watch only the Indianapolis Indians, visiting Cincinnati Red Scouting Director Joe Bowen was also treated to a game between Republicans from the city-county building and the statehouse. Impressed, he wrote to the local county chairman: "I saw things I've never seen on any baseball diamond before. Your boys had moves rarely seen these days." Through some kind of oversight, no doubt, Bowen made no mention of signing the boys.
TWO PHOTOS