Coghlan Will Try to End Slump in Tonight’s Meet

Before this winter, Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan hadn’t lost an indoor mile since 1981. His winning streak was at 15 and he was known as the chairman of the boards.

So the logical course for Coghlan entering this indoor season would have been to change nothing.

Instead, he changed his diet. He began subscribing to “The Eat to Win Diet,” which was developed by Dr. Robert Haas and popularized by Martina Navratilova.

Coghlan hasn’t won since.

“For me, it was the eat-to-lose diet,” he said.

He will be looking for his first victory in five races, four of them miles, tonight in The Times/GTE Indoor Games at the Forum against an international field that includes 6 of the 10 fastest milers from last year. He also will run the mile Sunday in the Michelob Invitational at San Diego’s Sports Arena.

Among the milers competing at the Forum will be Americans Steve Scott and Sydney Maree, Australian Mike Hillardt and New Zealander John Walker. But the favorite is another Irishman, Marcus O’Sullivan, who has won all five of the miles he has entered this winter, three of them in which Coghlan was entered.

O’Sullivan’s first victory over Coghlan, the one that broke the streak, was in the Sunkist Invitational last month at the Sports Arena.

Even though Coghlan, 33, said immediately after finishing second to O’Sullivan that he half expected to lose and was not shattered, he admitted this week that the race caused him to begin having doubts about his ability for the first time.

“I was worried that I had lost it,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Is this the way age creeps up on you?’ ”

But before he would admit to that, he sought a second opinion.

After a second-place finish to Doug Padilla in the two-mile at the Dallas Times Herald Invitational, Coghlan, who hadn’t been able to shake what he considered to be a flu bug, visited a doctor near his home in Rye, N.Y. The doctor advised him to change back to his old diet, which was no diet.

“I’ve never watched my diet, even though I don’t eat a lot of junk food,” he said. “But for some reason, I felt I could do with losing a few pounds. I decided to follow the diet with no medical assistance.

“After two or three weeks of the diet, everybody said, ‘You look awful.’ People were used to seeing me look fit and solid. Now, they were seeing me looking gaunt. I lost a lot of weight. It was embarrassing. I was in Ireland, and people would prepare meals for me, and I would say, ‘No thanks, I don’t eat that.’ They thought I was crazy.”

Coghlan couldn’t argue with them when he began to suffer from a weak stomach, which made it difficult for him to train.

“On Super Bowl Sunday, I went out for a 10-mile run and stopped after 500 yards,” he said. “I crawled up on the couch and went to sleep.”

The doctor told him what he wanted to hear.

“He said I was stupid for following that diet,” Coghlan said. “He said there was no reason to diet with the amount of miles that I was running every day. I’m sure it’s good for some people but not for me. Now, I’m eating everything.”

Coghlan’s next race was the mile in the Vitalis/U.S. Olympic Invitational at the New Jersey Meadowlands, where he finished fourth. But he said he was feeling better than he has all winter last Friday night in a second-place finish to O’Sullivan at the Millrose Games in New York.

Coghlan was attempting to become the only person to win the Wanamaker Mike at the Millrose Games seven times. He and Glenn Cunningham each won it six times.

“I’m getting to see what it’s like on the other side,” Coghlan said. “In some ways, it’s more fun to be the challenger. The pressure is not on me now. I’ve always been expected to win, so I usually went out trying not to lose instead of trying to win. Now, I’m running offensively instead of defensively.”

Like Coghlan, O’Sullivan, 24, went to school at Villanova.

“He’s where I was about seven years ago,” Coghlan said. “I think he’s going to be one of the dominant milers for the next seven or eight years. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him put together 15 or 16 victories in a row, except I intend to stop him Friday night.”

Besides Coghlan, who is from Dublin, and O’Sullivan, who is from Cork, two other Irishmen in tonight’s mile field are Ray Flynn, the meet record-holder, and Frank O’Mara, who has the world’s fastest time in the mile this year. Flynn went to East Tennessee State and O’Mara to Arkansas.

“A lot of Irish eyes are smiling,” Coghlan said lyrically. “A lot of Irish guys are miling.”

Asked during a press conference Tuesday about the success of Irish milers, he said, “It must be the rolling hills and the clean air.”

“Yeah,” interrupted New Zealand’s Walker, “except all of them are living in the United States.”

The meet will begin at 2 p.m. with the men’s 35-pound weight throw at West L.A. College.

All other events are at the Forum, beginning at 5 p.m. with the men’s mile walk. Open track events will start at 6:55. The pole vault will begin at 7.

The rivalry between pole vaulters Billy Olson and Sergei Bubka has attracted most of the pre-meet attention, but Olson also will be paying close attention to Jimmy Howard, a high jumper.

With three indoor meets remaining in the Mobil Grand Prix, Howard leads with 72 points to 70 for Olson. Both are Texans who compete for the Pacific Coast Club.

Diane Dixon of New York’s Atoms Track Club has virtually clinched the women’s championship with 66 points to 46 for runner-up Delisa Walton Floyd. Floyd, who beat Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova in one race last weekend and Romania’s Doina Melinte in another, will meet Dixon tonight in the 500-yard event.

Points are awarded for performances and world records in Grand Prix meets. After the meets this weekend in Los Angeles and San Diego, the final opportunity to win points will be in the Mobil/TAC national championships at New York Feb. 28.

The men’s and women’s overall champion will each receive $10,000. The leader in each individual event at the end of the season will receive $3,000.

Howard and Valerie Brisco-Hooks are the defending overall champions. Olson won the men’s overall championship in 1982 and 1983, the first two years of the Grand Prix competition.

Besides Olson, the world indoor record-holder at 19-5 1/2, and Bubka, whose best indoor effort is 19-5, there are four other 19-foot vaulters in the fields tonight and Sunday in San Diego.

They include American Joe Dial, who held the world indoor record briefly this winter at 19-4 3/4; Soviet Vasily Bubka, who cleared 19-2 outdoors last year; France’s Pierre Quinon, the Olympic champion who vaulted 19-4 last year, and American Earl Bell, the Olympic bronze medalist who has topped 19-0.

Dial, whose poles didn’t catch up with him in time for the meets last weekend in New York and Rosemont, Ill., arrived in Southern California Wednesday, his poles in tow.