1929: Derby hats are tossed in the air and the band strikes up “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as Ray Conger of the Illinois Athletic Club scores a monumental upset by defeating the great Paavo Nurmi in the Wanamaker Mile. In a 1979 story in the New York Times marking the 50th anniversary of the race, the famed Red Smith observed: “Among the elder statesmen of track and field, it is still regarded as the most stunning upset of all time.”
1930: Stella Walsh, the great Polish-born sprint star who grew up in the United States, is named the meet’s Outstanding Performer for breaking the World Indoor Record at 50 Yards in both the heat and the final. She is the first woman to earn that honor. Two years later, Walsh would win the Olympic gold medal at 100 meters. In 1980, Walsh was shot to death during a robbery; an autopsy revealed that she had both male and female chromosomes in a condition known as “mosaicism.”
1931: Despite a raging blizzard, a capacity crowd packs the Garden to witness 19-year-old George Spitz, a New York University freshman, break the indoor world high jump record with a leap of 6 feet, 7 inches, beating a field that included 1924 Olympic gold medalist Harold Osborn. Spitz would win the next three years, as well.
Fred Schmertz, who was named meet director in 1934, is joined by his granddaughter Amy in 1974 to congratulate Mark Belger, winner of the first Millrose Boy' High School Mile and a classmate of Amy's. Seated in the front row clapping at left is New York City Mayor Abe Beame.
Credit: Manning Solon
1932: On the 25th anniversary of the meet, Gene Venzke of the University of Pennsylvania captures the Wanamaker Mile in a World Record 4:11.2, leading from start to finish. At one point in his career, Venzke trained for races by running to his job at a mill in Pottstown, PA.
1933: The Millrose Games offers a hopeful break to a city in the throes of the Great Depression, with the beginning of the Glenn Cunningham era. Cunningham, who wins his first of six Wanamaker Miles, became one of the world’s greatest milers and a two-time Olympian despite the scars he bore on his legs, which were severely burned in a 1916 schoolhouse fire that killed his older brother.
1934: Fred Schmertz, who has been involved in the Millrose Games since the event’s inception in 1908, is named Meet Director.
1935: In his only Millrose appearance, Jesse Owens wins the 60-Yard Dash. He would go on to win four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and become a powerful symbol in the struggle for desegregation and the end to racial bigotry.
1936: In the Boston K. of C. mile the week before Millrose, Glenn Cunningham was declared the winner after bumping Joe Mangan as Mangan tried to pass. Many thought Cunningham should have been disqualified. A rematch is slated for Millrose, where Mangan, the former Cornell ace, vows to avenge his defeat. He makes good on that vow, upsetting both Cunningham and Gene Venzke in the Wanamaker Mile. It would prove to be Cunningham’s only Wanamaker loss from 1933-1939.
1937: From the Feb. 15. issue of “Time” magazine: “Sueo Ohe of Keio University with only five days to accustom himself to a board runway, indoor performing, New York City and new vaulting poles, smilingly hoisted himself through the din of the evening hours up over the rising crossbar until World Record Holder George Varoff of the University of Oregon (14 ft., 6.5 in.), Olympic Champion Earle Meadows of Southern California (14 ft., 3.25 in.) and five other contestants had tumbled defeated into the sawdust landing pit. Ohe sailed easily over 14 ft. 3 in. for a new meet record. A jury of sportswriters voted him the Rodman Wanamaker International Trophy for the meet's finest performance.”
