THE PACIFIC 10 TRACK AND FIELD MEET : Oregon Wins as UCLA Loses Thomas

It was the beginning of the end for UCLA Saturday when Henry Thomas limped home on the anchor leg of the 400-meter relay at the Pacific 10 track and field championships at the Coliseum.

The sprint relay was the first running event on the program. The last one, the 1,600-meter relay, was equally disastrous for the Bruins.

John Phillips, replacing Thomas, who also withdrew from the 100 and 200, hopped off the track on the first curve of the second leg of the 1,600 relay with a hamstring injury, and any chance the Bruins had of winning the meet was dashed.

Oregon, a traditional track power, came on strong to win the title with 134 points. UCLA had to settle for second with 115 points, while three-time defending champion Washington State was third with 104. Next came Cal with 89 points, and USC, rebounding after a bad first day, was fifth with 62.

The meet was expected to be a two-team race between UCLA and Washington State. But someone forgot to inform Oregon.

The Ducks got a 1-2 finish in the triple jump, a second and fourth in the 800, a fourth in the 5,000 and a vital third in the discus, all in come-through performances.

Even had UCLA won the 1,600 relay without Thomas, Oregon would have won the meet with its discus points. Kevin Carr, in third, finished ahead of UCLA’s Jim Banich, who was sixth.

But the discus competition was still going on when the 1,600-meter relay started, and UCLA Coach Bob Larsen was hoping that a win in the relay would spur one of his discus throwers to move ahead of Carr.

UCLA compiled 53 points Friday, while Washington State had 69 and Oregon 68. But the Bruins figured to get a lot of points in the sprints and hurdles Saturday.

They got some, but not enough. Thomas, coming back from a foot injury, felt a tightness in his hamstring as he anchored UCLA to a fourth-place finish in the sprint relay. With the NCAA meet only two weeks away, Larsen didn’t want to risk further injury to his freshman sprinter and retired him for the day.

“Oregon did a great job,” Larsen said. “I had talked to everybody in the morning and said it was now between us and Oregon. I thought our athletes competed extremely well, but we left the door open when Thomas was injured in the first competition, and that forced it to the mile relay.

“I thought we could score in the 140s if everything went well. Oregon just maximized everything they could do.”

Washington State Coach John Chaplin had conceded the meet to UCLA Friday, telling writers to congratulate Larsen. Noting this, the UCLA coach said: “In the annals of track and field and most sports, things don’t always work that way.”

Oregon Coach Bill Dellinger said he thought his team had a chance of winning with some top performances and breaks, adding that UCLA got an unfavorable break when Thomas was injured.

Excluding injuries, neither team faltered. But Oregon got the big points in the triple jump and discus near the end of the meet, and UCLA couldn’t counter.

A crowd of 4,493 on a warm day watched some outstanding performances, including meet records in the 400, the 400 intermediate hurdles and the high jump. A sampling:

400--This was regarded as the feature race, mainly involving Washington State’s Gabriel Tiacoh, the silver medalist in the 1984 Olympics, and Danny Everett, UCLA’s ever improving freshman.

Everett lost contact with Tiacoh on the backstretch, and the runner from the Ivory Coast was also a strong finisher in the fast time of 44.58 seconds. Tiacoh was actually slowing down at the finish and waving to the crowd. Everett managed to get second with a lifetime best time of 45.42.

Tiacoh, 23, was just as impressive in an anchor leg of the 1,600 relay. He made up considerable ground in pulling his team into second and was timed in an unofficial 43.5 seconds.

--UCLA’s Kevin Young cut 1.19 seconds off his best time in winning the 400 hurdles in 49.02. He had previously finished third in the long jump and fourth in the 110-meter high hurdles.

--Young’s teammate, freshman Mike Marsh, who wasn’t as renowed as his Hawthorne High School teammate Henry Thomas, did his best to keep the Bruins in the title hunt. He got off to a slow start in the 100 but finished strong to win in a lifetime best time of 10.29.

--USC’s Joey Bunch altered his race strategy from the previous Saturday’s Pepsi Invitational and didn’t bolt into the lead of the 800 in the early part of the race. But he came on in the stretch to win in 1:48.74, with only fractions of a second on the clock separating the first four finishers.

--Other Trojans were impressive after a faltering team showing Friday. Mike Dexter out-sprinted Cal’s Atlee Mahorn and Marsh and Everett to win the 200 in 20.49, a lifetime best.

USC’s Bernd Kneissler, from West Germany, won the discus at 202 feet 11 inches, and freshman Robert Reading was a solid second in the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 13.83, behind Arizona State’s Andrew Parker at 13.73.

--Oregon’s Dub Myers, accustomed to colder weather, wasn’t bothered by the change in climate as he won the 1,500 in 3:41.31 and then came back 45 minutes later to get fourth in the 800 while his teammate, Dave Anderton, saved second place for the Ducks.

Track Notes

Washington’s Mike Ramos, who set a collegiate record in the decathlon with 8,322 points earlier in the week, was named athlete of the meet. “It really surprised me because I didn’t even know this award existed,” Ramos said wonderingly. . . . Stanford’s Brian Marshall set a meet record in the high jump by clearing 7-4. . . . UCLA’s Mike Powell was a busy performer. He won the long jump Friday at 26-5, then came back Saturday to run a leg on the sprint relay and get fourth in the triple jump and fifth in the high jump. . . . Asked if there was any pressure on him to win the 100 with Henry Thomas out of the meet, Mike Marsh said it all in one word: “Significantly.” . . . Oregon Coach Bill Dellinger said his team didn’t sneak up on anyone. “The fact we beat Washington State and Cal in dual meets and had 13 NCAA qualifiers with another one today would show that UCLA wasn’t totally unaware of us,” he said. . . . Dellinger said he made a last minute decision to put Mark McMonigal in the 5,000, the next to last track event. McMonigal had won the demanding 10,000 on Friday. It was a good hunch since McMonigal got four points with a fourth-place finish while teammate Harold Kuphaldt had to quit after three laps. . . . Washington State’s Gabriel Tiacoh became the first conference 400 runner to win the event three consecutive years. “I didn’t really care about my time,” he said. “I just wanted to win because it was my last Pac-10 meet.”