It’s a Race Too Far for Americans

The 1,500-meter race in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was formful in one important respect: For the 16th straight Olympiad, an American didn’t win it. For the fourth straight, and the 12th out of the last 16, one didn’t even get a medal.

It’s one of sport’s enduring mysteries: What happens to the Yanks in this most American of foot races and distances and events? We never expect to win the luge or the coxed fours or the small-bore rifle prone.

But to go 80 years without winning the metric mile?

That’s one for Ripley. Agatha Christie.

It isn’t as if we never had the talent. The roll call of American milers reads like a Who’s Who of Track and Field. There were Glenn Cunningham, Bill Bonthron, Gene Venzke, Archie San Romani, Jim Beatty, Jim Grelle, Jim Ryun, Wes Santee.

And there was Steve Scott.

These were guys who could go out and crack world and national records every time they hit the track. Then they’d go to the Olympics and crash and burn.

Look at the record: In 1932, Gene Venzke set the mile indoor record--and couldn’t even make the Olympic team. Of those who did, the best they could do was Glenn Cunningham’s fourth. The 1,500 was won by a runner from Italy, Luigi Beccali.

In 1936, Cunningham was the holder of the world record for the mile, 4:06.8. In the Olympic race at Berlin that year, he broke the 1,500-meter world record, which, incidentally, had been set by American Bill Bonthron.

Unfortunately, the gold-medal winner also broke it--by a full second--and Cunningham finished well behind New Zealand’s Jack Lovelock.

That the American effort in this event seemed to be cloaked in black cats and witches’ brooms was never more evident than in the Friday the 13th saga of Jim Ryun.

Ryun might have been the greatest miler who ever lived. He held the world record for the 1,500--3:31.1--in 1968, when they put the Olympic Games 7,500 feet above sea level.

The race was won by a man used to that altitude, the Kenyan, Kipchoge Keino, but his winning time was almost four seconds slower--3:34.9--than Ryun’s record. Yet, he beat Ryun--whose lips were turning blue at the time--by 18 yards.

The next Games were at sea-level, and Ryun was the holder of the world record in the mile. He had a heat to run in which he needed only to finish fourth or better.

He finished ninth.

He crashed into a runner he should have been 50 meters ahead of and fell heavily to the track with 500 meters to go.

Wes Santee was America’s--and some say the world’s--best miler in the late 1950s and our best chance to beat the Aussie, Herb Elliott, in the 1960 Rome Olympics. Except that Wes got caught accepting illegal airline fares to track meets and was barred for life for a transaction that would be perfectly legal today.

In the late 1970s and ‘80s, Steve Scott was America’s premier miler. He was certainly the only runner in the world who posed any threat to Britain’s glorious pair of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett in the Moscow Olympics.

Still, it took nothing less than a decree of the President of the United States to throw him out of that race. Americans are nothing if not ingenious in finding ways to lose the 1,500.

By 1984, Scott seemed even more ready. He had run 105 sub-four-minute miles, more than anyone in history except John Walker. He appeared to be peaking in strength, and his principal competition, the brittle Brits--Coe, Ovett and Steve Cram--seemed to be battling a variety of illnesses from mononucleosis to bronchial asthma.

Scott, who had run a final 200 in a 3:47 mile race in 25.9 and the last 400 in that race in 53.1, reasoned that his best chance in the 1,500 at Los Angeles in ’84 would be in seeing to it that the race was not a dawdle but a contest of strength.

He had to make Coe and Cram use up some of their speed early, to expend some of their kick before the finish. He counted on still having his in the stretch.

He ripped off a 57.8 second lap, a 57.7 third. He was leading the race with 500 meters to go, but his blistering pace, designed to tire everyone else, tired Steve Scott.

Runners went past him looking like picket fences seen from a moving train. He finished a staggering 10th. Coe, the winner, ran the last 300 in 39.3. Scott ran it in 45.3. He succeeded in taking the kick only out of Steve Scott.

Scott has been picking up the pieces since that shocking afternoon of Aug. 11, 1984. He had found yet another way for Americans to lose the Olympic 1,500. When it comes to that, good old American know-how really rises to the occasion.

Scott will run in the special mile next Saturday during the Pepsi Invitational at UCLA’s Drake Stadium. His opposition will come mainly from gold-medal winner--in the 800--Joaquim Cruz. This will be the second annual renewal of this rivalry. Two years ago, the Olympic year, Scott won by 1/100th of a second. Last year, Cruz won by 1/100th of a second.

For Steve Scott, the race is just a stepping stone on the road to Seoul in 1988. He has an Olympic medal coming, is his view.

But he may be ready to give up on America’s jinx race. He may pass the 1,500 at Seoul to try the 5,000.

That shouldn’t be quite such a hoodoo. The Americans won a gold medal in that as recently as 1964. Of course, that’s the only time we’ve ever won one in it.

But of course, that race, unlike the mile, is un-American to begin with. Americans don’t run 5,000 meters at one time unless someone is shooting at them.

The mile on the other hand, is as American as pizza to go. We have to work to lose it. We just have to think up new ways. Nobody said it would be easy.