Word: slovaks
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This was the event that put an end to the races in 1949-after famed Racer Bill Odom piled into a Cleveland apartment house, killing himself and two other people. Practicing at Reno last week, Miro Slovak, a Czech who fled West in 1952 and now flies for Continental Airlines, screamed down the straightaway at 400 m.p.h.-square into a badly marked 13,000-volt power line. Sparks showered over Slovak's Bearcat; one wing was gouged, but miraculously Slovak kept control. With extraordinary efficiency, the power company restrung the wire overnight. Next day-boing!-another pilot knocked...
...brouhaha had barely begun. In his first heat, Korean War Ace (seven MIGs) Bob Love averaged 410 m.p.h. -only to be placed third for cutting over three pylons, completely missing another. Then California's Darryl Greenameyer won his first heat, beating Slovak by 10 m.p.h.-and disqualified himself by landing on Reno's paved runway instead of Stead's dirt. Not that Greenameyer didn't try. Stripped of practically everything, including landing flaps, his silver Bearcat hippity-hopped all over the runway until he frantically poured on the power and took off again. Landing safely...
...third heat with five finalists rolled around, and now even the gods were angry: a buffeting 40-m.p.h. wind whipped across the desert. Neither Miro Slovak nor Bob Love seemed to notice; both had won their second heats, and this one had $5,000 riding on it. Wingtip to wingtip they howled down the straightaway at less than 25-ft. altitude, stood shuddering on one wing in vertical, 7-G turns around the pylons. On the back stretch of the second lap, Slovak had the lead. Then they disappeared into a dust cloud. When they blasted through, Love...
...Slovak was happy. Promoter Stead was happy. Reno officials were happy. "This was just a dry run," said one. "This is going to be the king of all motor sports." Most important, the nervous observers from the FAA were happy-or relieved anyhow. In nine days of racing, nobody had been killed or even seriously injured-unless you count a careless mechanic who fell off a parked plane and broke...
Last week Old Stalinist Antonin Novotny, President and first secretary of the Communist Party, bowed to mounting pressure from younger party leaders for further liberalization, announced the purge of two oldtime comrades-in-arms. Served up as scapegoats were Karol Bacilek, 66, first secretary of the Slovak wing of the nation's Communist Party and former Minister of Internal Security; and Bruno Kohler, 62, a party member since its founding in 1921 and No. 3 man on the Central Committee Secretariat...