Track and Field / Mal Florence : Campbell Now Going After Foster

Tonie Campbell has been regarded as a world-class high hurdler for several years. But he was always just below that elite group of Renaldo Nehemiah, Greg Foster and Olympic champion Roger Kingdom.

Now Campbell has served notice that he’s ready to move up in class if, indeed, he hasn’t already made the move.

The former USC hurdler said he even surprised himself when he won the 110-meter hurdles in the fast time of 13.19 seconds Saturday night at an invitational meet in Modesto.

Only Nehemiah, Foster, Kingdom and Sam Turner have ever run faster, and no one had a better time during the 1986 season.

Campbell decisively beat Kingdom at Modesto and now he intends to beat Foster, the world’s best in the event, Saturday at the Pepsi Invitational at UCLA.

Foster has routinely beaten Campbell in the past, but the 13.19 race has renewed Campbell’s confidence.

“There isn’t an athlete in the world that I can’t beat,” Campbell said Monday at a track luncheon. “I’m going for it all this year.”

Someone asked Campbell if that meant that he would be a threat at the World Championships Aug. 29-Sept. 6 in Rome.

“Not really. I know who is going to win the World Championships,” Campbell said, smiling enigmatically. “The others have to think of me as a threat to them.”

Campbell, 26, said he has been on a scouting mission recently. He went to Houston to track down hurdler Cletus Clark--and beat him. Then, he took care of Kingdom at Modesto.

His next scouting assignment?

“The biggest one of them all,” he said, referring to Foster. “I hope he comes out to play. Who knows? Maybe yesterday’s paper (his 13.19 time) might have stopped him to think twice about running.”

Campbell may be taking a cue from Nehemiah in regard to playing mind games with Foster.

It remains to be seen whether Campbell has elevated himself to Foster’s class, though, after one fast race. But Foster, who was ranked No. 1 in the world last year, didn’t run any faster than 13.25 in 1986.

Campbell has his credentials. He was the World Cup champion in 1985 and the World Indoor champion last March.

But the general belief was that he won the indoor race in Indianapolis by default after Foster and Mark McKoy collided and went sprawling to the track.

“I’m still bitter over the world championships, not to the point of being angry, but disappointed in the media and spectators who didn’t think I could do it--and disappointed for doubting myself.

“I ran one of the fastest times (7.51) in history in that race. Greg was in trouble at the first hurdle. McKoy traditionally comes back to you. I know I would have won that race anyway.”

Campbell, 6-3 and 165, doesn’t have blazing speed. He said he relies on his technique.

“It’s all technique for me. That’s the only reason I’ve gotten this far,” he said. “Put me in a 100-meters race against Foster, Nehemiah, or (half-miler) Johnny Gray and they’d beat me. I’m not a sprinter at all. I rely on my technique to finesse my way through a race to win.”

Campbell said he was told that he exploded over the third and fourth hurdles in the Modesto race.

“They said I made a move I hadn’t made in years, but I plan to make some bigger moves,” Campbell said meaningfully.

You know it’s a world championship year when veteran competitors such as pole vaulter Mike Tully and high jumper Dwight Stones show a renewed interest in their events.

Tully, 30, who is known as a big-meet competitor, is selective about when and where he competes in seasons between the World Championships, or Olympic Games.

“You just can’t go 100% all the time,” Tully said. “I took 18 months off at one time and last year wasn’t the year to do well. It’s a matter of physically and mentally resting at the right time.”

Tully, the Olympic Games silver medalist in 1984, said he plans to keep on vaulting through the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. But he hedged a bit.

“I want to finish my career in ’92 when I’m 35. However, I don’t want to put a limit on it (his career) if I’m jumping 19-4 consistently when I’m 35,” he said. “But, who knows? The record might be 20-feet-6 then. You have to look at it from year to year.”

Tully, who will compete Saturday in a field that includes Thierry Vigneron of France, Billy Olson, Earl Bell and Dave Kenworthy, says that he is enjoying himself now more than ever.

“I think I can make it through ’92 if my legs can handle it,” he said. “I’m having more fun now than I did 10 years ago, and that’s why I want to continue to do it.

“This has to be one of the best events in sports to participate in. How many times do you take off the ground and defeat gravity by going over a bar. There is no other sport really like it.

“I feel I have a lot more left in me. I just have to find a way to tap it out.”

Stones, 33, has been virtually inactive the past two years as he pursued his broadcasting career.

But the lure of championship competition has him jumping again.

“I said a couple of years ago that if I was to continue jumping with any kind of goal in mind, my goal would be to make the World Championship team in 1987,” Stones said.

So Stones is still active in an event at an age in which other athletes have long been retired.

Stones was accompanied to the track luncheon by West Germany’s Dietmar Mogenburg, the 1984 Olympic high jump champion who will compete against Stones, Doug Nordquist and Lee Balkin, among others, in Saturday’s meet.

Europeans dominate the high jump now, but Mogenburg said that Stones, a former world record-holder, is still highly regarded in Europe.

“I respect Dwight very much and he is very famous in Europe,” Mogenburg said. “I would like to see him jump again at the age of 33.”

Tully said that it has been a big party for he and Stones for many years. It seems as if the party will continue.