Track and Field / Randy Harvey : L.A. Gains Support as the Host City for World Meet in 1991

With the Coliseum Commission’s decision last month to save the track, The Athletics Congress has announced its support of Los Angeles as the host city for the 1991 World track and field championships.

Tokyo is considered the early favorite, but the candidates won’t make presentations to the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) until March. The IAAF, the world governing body for track and field, will announce its decision at the 1987 World championships in Rome.

“We weren’t able to finalize our bid until the Coliseum Commission agreed to the seating plan, which will keep the track,” said Will Kern, assistant director of special events for The Times, which is sponsoring the effort in conjunction with TAC, the national governing body.

When promoter Al Franken’s telephone rings, he never knows whether to answer it.

He was glad he did Monday night when Willie Gault, the Chicago Bears’ wide receiver and a world-class hurdler-sprinter, was on the line, saying he wants to return to the track this winter.

“He said he’ll be ready to run two weeks after the Bears’ last game,” Franken said.

That could be as early as Franken’s Sunkist Invitational at the Sports Arena Jan. 16 if the Bears don’t advance beyond the first round of the playoffs.

Regardless, Franken said he already has a deal with Gault to run both the high hurdles and a sprint in the Michelob Invitational Feb. 22 at San Diego’s Sports Arena.

Gault is eligible to compete again because of the so-called Nehemiah Rule, adopted last summer by the IAAF.

According to the rule, professional athletes in another sport may participate in track and field after applying to the IAAF.

Renaldo Nehemiah, who wasn’t re-signed when his contract with the San Francisco 49ers expired at the end of last season, was reinstated by the IAAF last summer. He ran a race in Italy before he was injured.

But Nehemiah, still the world record-holder in the 110-meter high hurdles, is training for the indoor season, which could begin for him in Los Angeles, if he and Franken can reach an agreement.

Franken said he wants to match Nehemiah against Greg Foster, who, except for his second-place finish in the Olympics, dominated the high hurdles during Nehemiah’s absence. Not-so-friendly rivals, they haven’t raced against one another since 1983.

By February, Nehemiah, Foster and Gault could be running against each other in what could become the glamour event of the 1987 indoor season. Franken said that Gault plans to apply to the IAAF soon for reinstatement.

Other pro football players who have indicated an interest in returning to track for the indoor season are Ram wide receiver Ron Brown and Dallas running back Herschel Walker, both sprinters.

Although Franken heard good news from Gault, the promoter probably wishes he hadn’t answered the phone Tuesday when Brad Hunt, Mary Decker Slaney’s agent, called to say she had withdrawn from the Los Angeles meet.

She underwent surgery last week to remove scar tissue from her right Achilles’ tendon and will not begin training again for at least four weeks.

Hunt said Slaney might have tried to return too soon after giving birth to a daughter last summer. Slaney’s only competition since has been the Fifth Avenue Mile in September, when she finished sixth.

Asked if Slaney will miss the indoor season, Hunt said, “That’s a pessimistic outlook but not far from realistic. We’re going to play it by ear and see how quickly she rounds back into competition shape. She doesn’t want to race just to race.”

One of the more poignant scenes in Bud Greenspan’s Olympic film, “16 Days of Glory,” occurs when Myrella Moses, relieved because her husband, Edwin, has won the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, embraces him and pleads, “No more Olympics.”

Two years later, Moses not only is looking ahead to the 1988 Games at Seoul, South Korea, but also possibly to the 1992 Games at Barcelona, Spain.

It has been assumed that Moses, who will be 32 this summer, would retire after Seoul, but he said recently that he’s keeping an open mind.

“If I’m still healthy, there’s no reason to quit after 1988,” he said. “Just because I reach a certain age doesn’t mean it’s time to retire. I’m going to take it one year at a time.”

Distance runner Henry Rono, undergoing treatment at an alcohol rehabilitation center in the East, was invited by Franken to run the two-mile at the Los Angeles and San Diego meets.

But Rono’s manager, Tracy Sundlun, said the Kenyan probably won’t compete again until spring, even though he needs the money. He recently was arrested on three counts of theft in New Jersey after allegedly conning bank tellers out of money.

“I’ll have to find some way to get him some money, but I don’t think he’ll be able to run until the outdoor season,” said Sundlun, president of the Metropolitan Athletics Congress in New York.

“There is a financial imperative, but I don’t want him to embarrass himself. If he ran indoors, he might run a 4:50 mile. He doesn’t need any more pressure. It was pressure that drove him to this in the first place.”

Track Notes

Five athletes have been nominated for the 1986 Jesse Owens Award, U.S. track and field’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. They are sprinter Evelyn Ashford, triple jumper Mike Conley, quarter-miler Diane Dixon, hammer thrower Jud Logan and heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Joyner-Kersee, who broke the world heptathlon record twice this year, is expected to win when the announcement is made at TAC’s convention Saturday. . . . The four latest inductees to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame are pole vaulter Bob Seagren, formerly of USC; sprinter and long jumper Barney Ewell; race walker Ron Laird, and the late Andy Bakjian. Bakjian, a coach and an official in Los Angeles for several decades, was chairman of the panel that selected the track and field officials for the 1984 Olympic Games. . . . Officials in Indianapolis say they are expecting the largest crowds ever for indoor track at the Hoosierdome for the first World indoor championships March 6-8. . . . The U.S. indoor circuit, particularly the later meets, should benefit from the number of foreign athletes arriving early for the Indianapolis meet. . . . Discus thrower Al Oerter is back in training for the 1988 Olympics. He turned 50 in August.