V 12 N. 42 "What Happened to All the Cinder Tracks, Daddy?" and Where are the Eugene Spectators?

Hi George,

I am the distance and XC coach at Sutter Middle School in Folsom, CA (20 miles east of Sacramento).  I don’t know if you can call our track a cinder one, more like dirt and sand, and when the geese come, a mixture of dirt, sand, and poop.  It is not lined, so we have all rainbow starts in our track workouts.  When we do have meets, their times plummeted on the nice HS artificial tracks.  Don Betowski

George

  College of Coastal Georgia   link.    Still looks like dirt to me

First, odd shaped tracks.

Get Paul, Steve and some of the old UCTC guys to talk about the old
University of Chicago Stagg Field track.  It was more oval shaped than
anything with long curves and fairly short straightaways.  It was the
finest track I have ever run on especially when, after the 1959 Pan
American Games, the surface of the track, built just for that meet in
Soldiers Field, was scooped up, put in barrels and transported to Stagg
Field where the UCTC guys and volunteers spread it out and tamped it
down again.   A November 28, 1960 article, Run For Its Money by Ray
Cave, has more detail.  Alas, a library now sits on that site.  

I also wondered about the lack of spectators at the NCAA meet.  I would
offer as an opinion that it is a  combination of the bigger stadium and
the decline in track and field fandom.  It will only get worse as more
universities drop men's track and field.  Thomas Coyne

Thanks Thomas and I think the world's first nuclear reaction took place under the grandstands of that track.  There's a monument commemorating it. The Manhattan Project George

An article about the U of Chicago track appeared in Sports Illustrated Nov 28, 1960 by Ray Cave.  It came from England in barrels and was used for the 1959 Pan Am Games and then transferred to the university afterward.    It was the same recipe as the famous Santry track in Dublin where Herb Elliott set his WR in the mile in 1958 as 4 other runners broke 4 minutes that night.  The track was described as miraculous.  

Here is Cave's article   Ray Cave's article on the Pan Am track   link

Another UCTC guy chimes in about the move of that track.

The track for the 1959 Pan-American games on Soldier's Field,  Chicago was dug up and brought to Hyde Park and I think installed in time for the 1961 dual US Poland meet. I remember specifically not volunteering to do the grunt work.  Ned Price