American Sprint Champ Seriously Ill Following Operation

(Excerpt/ Reprint)

Glendale, Cal. , Jan 3 (1929)

Frank Wykoff, the high school boy who burned the cinders last year for a national sprint championship, today lay critically ill in a hospital here, kept alive by blood transfusion from his couch Norm Hayhurst and Dick Ryan another Glendale athlete.

Wykoff whose feat of beating Charley Paddock in two races on the same day in the Olympic trials, placed the boy, then 18 years old, on a pinnacle of track prowess, underwent a tonsil operation last moth.  A hemorrhage was followed by two operations in an effort to heal his throat,  but it was announced today that the young athlete had not eaten in two weeks and was too weak to talk.

Dr. T. C. Young said he had not made known Wykoff's condition since he did not want to alarm the young man's friends during the holidays.  Young said the sprinter may recover.