THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Notes : A New, Proud Mary Wins the 3,000 Meters for the United States

Her name was Mary, she stood 5 feet 4 inches and weighed 103 pounds and she put on a gutty performance in the extreme heat and humidity to win a gold medal for the United States in the 3,000 meters of the Pan Am Games.

Sound familiar?

Well, it wasn’t Mary Decker, now Mary Slaney. No, that Mary, who holds the American record at 8 minutes 25.83 seconds, wasn’t here to compete. So that opened the door for Mary Knisely of Dallas--similar in looks, running style and enthusiasm--to win the gold. Her time was a snail’s pace 9:06.75, but then, humans aren’t supposed to be able to run well in saunas.

“I thought the time was irrelevant,” Knisely said. “I was just trying to do what it took to win. You just don’t get very good times in this kind of heat.”

The temperature at race time was 94 degrees and the humidity 57%.

“I think somebody said the temperature on the track was 107,” Knisely said.

The 27-year old physical therapist has the fifth best time in the world this year in the 3,000. And she hopes that her 8:42 will be a springboard for her at the World Championships in Rome in two weeks. Not that the Pan Am gold didn’t mean a great deal to her.

“It really feels good to win it,” she said. “Especially since the meet is in the U.S. This means you’re not just the best in your country, but the best in the Americas.”

Obviously, Knisely knows that she is not the best in her country or the Americas, should that other Mary choose to compete at that distance.

“No, I’ve run against her twice, and I haven’t even been close,’ she said. “I was in the race in England when she had her big rematch with Zola Budd, and I ran a terrible race that day. I was going to get to run against her this year in the San Jose Mile, but when I got to the track, I heard she had withdrawn.

“I’ve never been able to stay close to her when I’ve had the chance, so I just hope I get some more chances.”

When she does, it isn’t as if Knisely won’t get any good coaching. One of her bosses in her work as a physical therapist at the St. Paul Medical Center in Dallas is Peter Snell, a three-time Olympic champion (twice in the 800 and once in the 1,500) and a former world record-holder in the mile.

“Peter is really nice to me, and I get a lot of good advice on running, as you can imagine,” Knisely said. “The best advice he ever gave me is about how to train. That was, do what works for you, not what everybody else is doing.”

Besides having Snell as one of her bosses, Knisely has an interesting running connection in her job, which includes testing hearts and lungs and cholesterol levels of athletes.

“Sometimes, I even get to work on samples of some of my opponents, like Ruth Wysocki,” she said. “But the samples aren’t identified, so I don’t know exactly who is who.”

Knisely doesn’t appear to be the kind of person who would use her testing position to any personal advantage, anyway. For example, after she won the 3,000, there were still three runners struggling to finish. When the final runner, Teresa Paucar of Ecuador, finally made it across the finish line in the terrible heat--some four minutes after Knisely had crossed--Knisely went to her.

‘My Spanish isn’t very good, but I told her, as best I could, that she had a good race and she showed a lot of guts,” Knisely said.

“I remembered how I felt when I was in the same position in a race in Europe. I was sick and I think I ran the last two laps in 80 seconds each. But there were 30,000 people in the stands and you just have to finish. If you don’t, no matter how bad you feel at the time, you’ll make it too easy for yourself to drop out the next time.”

The heat here Sunday bothered more than the track and field athletes.

Alice Henderson, U.S. rower from Santa Paula, and a silver medalist in the coxwainless women’s pair oars, said after her race: “I think I’m still dehydrated. I could tell after about 500 meters that I wasn’t myself. I was starting to black out and was trying to keep my composure. I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker. By the last 10 strokes or so, I couldn’t see and I just wanted to finish the race.”

Jody Conradt, women’s basketball coach at the University of Texas, and the U.S. women’s coach here, is showing one of the best senses of humor among the U.S. coaches.

After her team built a big lead and then had to hold on to beat Brazil Saturday, Conradt said, tongue in cheek, “There was nothing to it. It was just another game. Somebody whispered to me near the end that CBS was about to cut away, and I knew we couldn’t have that and have women’s basketball miss out on all that exposure. So we went for the fast and furious finish.”

Then she talked about her team’s free-throw shooting, which has ranged from bad to horrible--21 of 35 against Peru and 14 of 27 against Brazil for a cumulative .560.

“I never have had a team that could shoot free throws,” she said. “We practice and work and try everything. Here, I get the best players in the world, and they still can’t shoot free throws. I guess it must be me.”

In freestyle wrestling, most matches begin with a little light head slapping, sort of a prelude to the serious holds.

But in Saturday night’s 149.5-pound gold medal match between the United States’ Andre Metzger and Cuba’s Eugenio Montero, Metzger apparently felt Montero’s first slap carried a little too much zeal. So he wound up and whacked the Cuban on the side of the head with a slap carrying even more gusto. Then the Cuban kicked Montero below the belt.

Before matters deteriorated further, the referee cautioned both wrestlers, after which Metzger dispatched the Cuban with a routine 6-2 decision to win the gold.

“We thought we were going to have a pretty good story for the press for a while there but there didn’t seem to be any hard feelings at all after the match,” wrestling official Pat Quinn said. “Shoot, they were practically hugging and kissing each other.”

U.S. super-heavyweight boxer Riddick Bowe is starting to sound like the U.S. light-heavyweight who won the 1960 Olympic gold medal in Rome, Cassius Clay.

Bowe, who meets favored Cuban Jorge Gonzales Wednesday in the Pan Am boxing tournament semifinals, figures he’ll parlay a gold medal here into a 1988 Olympic gold medal, then take the pro heavyweight championship away from Mike Tyson.

“Tyson is just taking care of the title temporarily, until I get there,” he says.