Word: gg
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Four Minutes Flat. Unlike Nurmi, Hägg has no fancy theories about his speed. A bashful, homespun farmer's son, reared in the wooded hills of northern Sweden, he attributes his flawless style to the springy forest paths, thickly padded with pine needles, where he first learned to run. He believes he is smooth and swift because he enjoys running more than anything else in the world except playing his accordion and doing the hambo, a native Swedish dance...
When a reporter once asked him if he had a slow pulse like Nurmi's (46), Gunder Hägg admitted that he had never bothered to notice (he has since discovered that it is low-48 at rest). He also scoffs at stop watches, diets and training rules. "I run," says he, "the way my muscles and nerves tell me. When I feel the time has come to sprint, I sprint...
Like Babe Ruth, gaunt and gainly Gunder Hägg has become popular with Swedish newsmen because of his ability to call his shots in advance. Last summer, during a track meet in Stockholm's Stadion, he announced that he would break the world's record for the mile the next...
...summer before, after being suspended from amateur competition for ten months (because he was unable to account to the Swedish Athletic Union for about $4 worth of listed travel expenses), Hägg retired to the hills of his native Jaemtland, vowed that he would be back to avenge that disgrace. Two days after his suspension was lifted he cracked the mile record, 48 hours later the twomile. Gunder Hägg's latest prediction: he will some day run a mile in four minutes flat, thinks California is the place where he might...
...Amateur Athletic Union, eager to have Hägg match strides with Super-Runner Gregory Rice in the national outdoor championships in New York City June 19-20, finally got him priority to cross the Atlantic by plane. But last week, on the eve of his scheduled departure, a Stockholm news despatch cryptically announced that Gunder Hägg had left for the U.S. on a Swedish tanker...