Track and Field Grand Prix : Scott Runs 100th Sub-4-Minute Mile; Gray Beats Cruz in the 800

Steve Scott ran his 100th sub four-minute mile Saturday at Bruce Jenner’s Bud Light meet. The sound you hear is the collective yawning of the track world.

Scott, who beat Ray Flynn, Chuck Aragon and Sydney Maree to win in 3:56.5, could have been a celebrated figure if rival John Walker hadn’t stolen his thunder by running his 100th sub-four-minute mile last Feb. 17. Scott had attempted to arrange a meet with Walker where the two would go for the 100 milestone in the same race.

But Walker instead arranged a series of meets that Scott called “Mickey Mouse” and, with terrific fanfare, ran a 3:54.57 in the rain in Auckland to beat Scott to history.

“Eat your heart out, Steve Scott,” were the 33-year-old New Zealander’s first comments after the race.

Two weeks later, Scott traveled to New Zealand for what they called “the grudge match,” promoted as if it were a Las Vegas title fight. Scott won.

But just as in Saturday’s race at San Jose City College, Scott was ruefully aware that his name in history was nudged aside by Walker’s grandstanding.

“It was a foregone conclusion I would get the record (milestone),” Scott said. That’s what the sponsors hoped, since mintues after the race they presented Scott with an engraved trophy commemorating the event.

“I knew I would get it, but I wanted to win. This is sort of anti-climactic, and didn’t receive the same attention Walker did. I feel John cheated the public out of a rare opportunity by going for his 100th sub-four-minute mile in a minor race instead of waiting to face me. It would have been a great race.

“I think my record is greater because I did it in 9 years while Walker took 13. I would like to be remembered as the “iron man” who didn’t dodge competition. We are the Lou Gehrigs of track and field.”

Scott is certainly a slugger, at least verbally. He said he and Walker sorted out their relationship last winter and are friends now. The two first met while Scott was at UC Irvine and Walker trained there for the 1976 Olympics.

“I modeled myself after him,” Scott said. “We are of the same breed.”

It’s Scott’s breeding--and fast-twitch muscle fibers--that bailed him out again Saturday. Maree and Mike Boit were running side by side in the lead going into the last 100 meters, and Scott and Flynn appeared to be boxed behind the two.

Scott rushed outside to outkick Flynn by two meters. Flynn was timed in 3:56.8.

Scott may have been upstaged by the absent Walker, but he gained nine points on the Grand Prix circuit. The Jenner meet was the first of the inaugural International Amateur Athletic Federation/Mobil Grand Prix 15-meet tour. Athletes in designated events gain points and stand to win $10,000 by the finals in Rome Sept. 7.

The athletes also had to undergo drug-testing, giving urine samples in the women’s locker room. Bob Hersh, the designated IAAF representative, said the samples would be sent to the lab at UCLA and the results forwarded to the IAAF.

Scott’s wasn’t the only ground-breaking performance. Johnny Gray’s thunderous finish to beat Joaquim Cruz in the 800 meters excited the crowd of 9,500 fans gathered here on a windy, sunny day.

It was the first time Cruz, the Olympic champion at 800, has been beaten at the distance since 1983, when he placed third at the World Championships at Helsinki.

With 200 meters to go, Gray was comfortably ahead of Cruz and Billy Konchellah of Kenya. Then the Brazilian surged ahead of Konchellah and made up ground on Gray. But Gray responded to win in 1:45.76. Cruz was second in 1:45.89 and Konchellah third in 1:46.59.

When a buzzing pack of reporters closed in around Cruz, asking the shy runner what happened, he merely smiled.

“What happened? He beat me,” Cruz said. “He was better fit than me today. It does take the pressure off me to lose. That was upsetting me. I don’t believe in those things (winning streaks). I go to do my best. Winning is a consequence of good work. I am satisfied with my time.”

The win for Gray was doubly meaningful: He had dedicated the race to a friend who has liver cancer, and it allowed him to share some of the attention usually lavished on Cruz, the bright new face.

“This was important to me,” Gray said. “A friend of mine, Curtis Perry, a 110-meter hurdler, has been hospitalized with liver cancer. He lost 30 pounds in three or four days. I saw him last week and I promised him that I would try to beat Cruz today--that I’d win for him.”

Other highlights:

--Imrich Bugar of Czechoslovakia produced the day’s most impressive mark in winning the discus. His throw of 233 feet 9 inches equalled the fourth best of all time.

--Olympic champion Pierre Quinon of France won the pole vault in 18-4 1/2.

--Grete Waitz, in her first ever track race in the United States, was passed by Francie Larrieu-Smith on the final curve and finished second in the 3,000. Smith won in 8:50.54.

--In the women’s 100, Valerie Brisco-Hooks beat Merlene Ottey-Page, 11.01 to 11.02 in a wind-aided race.