NEW YORK--In what must have been the cruelest, most heartbreaking loss ever suffered by a Harvard cross country team, the Princeton Tigers upset the favored Crimson in the Heptagonals here at Van Cortlandt Park yesterday afternoon.

The Herd's victory seemed assured just a mere 200 yards from the finish line of the grueling five-mile course, when Harvard's fifth man, Thad McNulty, collapsed from sheer exhaustion and was unable to complete the race. McNulty, in the 28th position when he dropped out of the competition, needed only to capture one of the top 39 slots to secure the trophy for Harvard. "I'm the goat," McNulty said immediately following the race, "there's just no way to get around that."

"I just started weaving back and forth with about a quarter-mile left and I tried to finish, tried to hold onto my position, but my legs just stopped," he said. "These legs of mine are just not made for cross country," McNulty, a one-mile specialist in track, added.

The Crimson, who scored 86 points, finished third behind Princeton and Navy (78 and 82 points, respectively). Point totals are calculated by adding up the places of finish of the first five runners from each school.

Following home Tim Cummins of Navy and Dartmouth's Art Switchenko, Ed Sheehan was Harvard's top finisher. Sheehan, running his best race of the season, was in good shape throughout the race, moving up from fifth to third in the second half of the contest.

Not far behind Sheehan, John Murphy, a sophomore, recorded his best effort to date, grabbing the fifth slot. Peter Fitzsimmons notched seventh, while captain Mark Meyer completed the course 22nd.

The fifth man for Harvard. Duy McRoskey, ended up in 48th position.

It was an amazing day for a northeastern November--sunny, close to 70 degrees--as some 80 runners took off. The harriers went out fast, tearing down the first mile of flat terrain, and attacking the rocky loop that is the second mile.

Truckin'

As the thinclads ran over the highway bridge after that critical second mile, the lone Crimson runner in good position at the front of the pack was Sheehan.

Snaking up the torturous, too-close-to-vertical-incline called Cemetery Hill, all of the Harvard harriers had picked up ground, with Sheehan still leading the group in third. Murphy had worked his way into seventh and Fitzie was close behind in ninth.

As they approached the end, it appeared as if the Crimson had come back to snatch the victory--Harvard was sitting 3,5,7,22,28--when McNulty could not continue the race.

So True

"Thad ran as hard as he could," Meyer said. "What more can you ask of a guy?"

Coach Bill McCurdy stressed that the Crimson could have picked up the eight points that separated them from victory almost anywhere. "We needed all five of our runners to be all right today to win the title and we didn't get it. Only Ed and John made real fine showings," he added.

"The wages of sin were visited upon us today," McCurdy said. "But I'll be damned if I know what we did to deserve it."