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Newspaper Page Text
m j KING AND QUEEN OF SWEDEN CHEERED THREE AMERICANS By William G. Shepherd. Stockholm, July 19. Here's the story of the great 100-meter race in the Olympic meet at Stockholm, as I saw it. The starter's gun cracked 17 times on the afternoon of Saturday, July 6, each time sending half a dozen of the world's amateur, sprinters off for the distance. It was the elimination. Later in the after noon the winners of the 7 heats ran six more heats to discover who were the six fastest men. The championship wa.s to lie between them. In five of the six heats Americans won. In the sixth Alfred Patching of South Af rica came in first, but there was no Ameri can in this heat. If Patching had been de feated in the semi-finals by an American the world would have beheld the astonish ing spectacle of six Americans running in the presence pf 27 nations to see which one of them was the champion hundred-meter man qf the world. On S,unday, July 7, the five Americans i arid Patching ran the final. There was a vast crowd in the stadium the largest of the whole series of games. The king and-qUeen of Sweden were there, with their court retinue, and the. boxes were filled with notables from every na tion in the world. The most stirring and spectacular event of the 1912 Olympics was over, it seemed, in a flash. A crack of the pisfol. a bunch of six men flying toward the tape, five of them wearing the American shield on the breasts, and then To the top of the three flag poles, which from day to day had bulletined victories, there fluttered three American flags. It is rare far one nation to capture all three places in an ahtletic event. It had aot happened before in the Stockholm i5SiW- Is ma meec l ne vast, cosmopolitan crowd -rose to its feet -and cneerea insanely tor tie Americans. R. C. Craig of Detroit w; first, Theji cante A. Meyer the $Jew York Athletic Clu and D. F. Lippmcott of t University of Pennsylvani; was a "close third. Patching t h e South .African, Was:' fMit-fVi iriitU fVlo nfUar- f,r- "St lSUl IA1, IVltH WXAW UU1U IVVVS Arriericans at his heels. MMr v,2r -?MfeAMa