Reprint - 5-19-03

For seventeen years Frank Wykoff was the fastest man on earth.  He'd run the 100 yard dash in the National Collegiate at Chicago in 9.4 seconds and no mortal touched that record until 1947, when Mel Patton, also from the University of Southern California, came in at 9.3.  A year later, Hayes did it in 9.1.

But in the meantime, Frank Wykoff, a three time Olympic champion had established himself as one of the great sprinters and athletes of our time, and engraved his name in gold letters in the annals of American and International track history.

He's here now on Holiday with his wife, Ethel Mae, and looking forward to his retirement next year from his post as Director of Special Schools of the County of Los Angeles, a job he's been doing for the past 21 years.

The Wykoff' are part of a group of Californians staying at the Hotel Playa de Palma through the offices of the American agency, Continental Express and its local agent, Viajes Compaas.  They find the climate pretty much the same as Los Angeles, but the air much better --they can breathe it.

Frank Wykoff started off his brilliant track career at Glendale High School by winning the State Championship in the 100 yard sprint in his junior year. His time was 9.6.

In his senior year (1928) he was with the American team at the Olympics in Holland where he not only placed 4th in the 100 meter dash (109 3/4 yards) but was the anchor man on the American 400 meters relay team which set a new world and Olympic record by doing the distance in 41 seconds flat.

A record promptly smashed at the next  Olympics in Los Angeles (1932) when the American 400 meter team did it in 40 seconds.  The American team consisted of Hector Dyer, Emmett Toppino, Bob Kiesel, and the and their anchor man, Frank Wykoff.

Frank stopped running for a while to take up a post as Superintendent of Schools in Carpinteria Santa Barbara, but in 1936 he went back into training and competed in the notorious Berlin Olympics in 1936.

He placed 4th in the 100 meter dash -- that was the year Jesse Owens won it with a time of 10.2 but the American relay team again broke the world and Olympic record by having two tenths of a second off the '32 mark.  The American team had Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, Foy Draper and their anchor man, Frank Wykoff, 39.8 seconds.

Frank and his good friend Charlie Paddock, (who had held the 100 yard sprint record at 9.5 till Frank broke it) are the only two men to have competed in three Olympics.

Naturally track had changed a lot since the days when Frank and Charlie Paddock ran...

...Then, as Frank points out, there were no starting block in the thirties, dash men had to "run out of a hole."  Trackmen's shoes lighter now, there are only four spikes instead of six and the "artificial tracks they run on these days are faster and smoother than the old cinder job.

Training ideas have changed too.  They used to think that weight lifting was bad for a sprinter and dash men would confine their track exercises to the traditional jog and walk, sit-ups, push-ups, chinning, but now the sprinters life weights regularly to strengthen their stomach and leg muscles.

But the basics are pretty much the same.  "You need a fast reflex to start off and then to think what you're doing, knees up, pivot from the hip."

Frank's work as director of Los Angeles county's special schools puts him in charge of a staff of 157 teachers and about 28,600 children and youths, all of whom are in the custody or the probation department, juvenile wards of the court.

Frank does not think juvenile crime has increased over the past year: he points out that the population rise naturally makes for greater numbers but "percentage wise it's about the same."

What is different is the gravity of crimes.  Most of the cases now are narcotics, "pills" as Frank says, and there is a greater incidence of more serious offences, not like your petty thievery of yesteryear.

Frank's department boats a very good teacher to student ration one for every 20 kids, a lot better than the national average of course, and his charges range in age from kindergarten to high school level although most are at junior high school age (12-14 years old).

Next year Frank retires.  He plans to do a lot of trout fishing and devote more time to his favorite hobby, building things with machinery.

"I'm going to build a car for my grandson," he says. He could teach him to run.