Seoul ’88 / Randy Harvey : Cheryl Miller Is Expected to Be Ready . . . but Not for the Trials

Favored to win a second straight gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the United States women’s basketball team would be formidable even if it used only the players who have requested permission to miss this week’s Olympic trials because of injuries.

Foremost among them is Cheryl Miller, a 4-time All-American at USC and a veteran of national teams that finished first in the 1984 Olympics and 1986 World Championships. Not quite recovered from surgery on her right knee in April of 1987, she will not be among the 51 players expected to participate in the trials, which begin today and end Sunday in Colorado Springs.

But considering her reputation and a medical report indicating that she should be fully recovered within the next two months, the American Basketball Assn. of the United States (ABAUSA) will probably include her among the 18 to 20 finalists invited to a mini-camp in Raleigh, N.C., June 3-9. Coach Kay Yow of North Carolina State eventually will cut the team to 12 players.

“Cheryl is Cheryl,” USC Coach Linda Sharp said. “She looks good to me.”

Sharp is among 16 coaches from throughout the United States who will determine on the final day of the trials which players will join Yow in Raleigh. Miller, who graduated in 1986, was a volunteer assistant for Sharp’s team last season and has been working out at USC.

“When she first came back, she had a tendency to favor her leg,” Sharp said. “But the more she played, the less she favored it. She still has to play with a brace. But she knows it, and it’s no problem for her.”

Also seeking a waiver is Kamie Ethridge, a former Texas point guard who started for the 1986 World Championship team. Linn Norenberg, an ABAUSA spokeswoman, said Ethridge also has virtually recovered from 1987 knee surgery.

The outlook is less encouraging for two others who underwent knee surgery last season--Texas’ Clarissa Davis, perhaps the best player in women’s college basketball before her injury, and Western Kentucky’s Terri Mann, who was the 1987 U.S. high school basketball player of the year as a senior in San Diego. The fifth player requesting a waiver is Tennessee’s Bridgette Gordon, who has a dislocated finger.

Only six months after shattering his left leg at the World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands, former UCLA gymnast Tim Daggett will return to international competition Thursday in Phoenix at the USA-USSR McDonald’s Challenge.

Daggett, 25, said he will attempt a pommel horse routine in the compulsory competition and may also try routines on the high bar and the parallel bars.

“Because it’s a low-key thing, it’ll be good for me to be out there,” Daggett said during a recent workout at the Wooden Center at UCLA. “It’s good for the judges to see, ‘Yeah, the kid’s still doing gymnastics.’ I’m doing pretty well in a lot of areas.”

A member of the U.S. team that won a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics, Daggett broke his leg after dismounting from the vault in Rotterdam, underwent four operations and was back in the gym in January, even before he discarded his crutches. He still wears a plastic brace when he works out.

Still unable to perform on the vault and in the floor exercise, Daggett is not being counted on for the Olympics by the United States Gymnastics Federation, which will conduct trials in August. But neither is he being counted out.

His surgeon, Bert Mandelbaum of the UCLA Medical Center, said that the odds in January were 99-1 against Daggett competing in the trials. Mandelbaum said that the odds now are 70-30 in Daggett’s favor.

Daggett said he expects to be among U.S. and Soviet gymnasts appearing in an exhibition Sunday at Pauley Pavilion.

Prevented from competing for 6 years, imprisoned for 15 months in his native East Germany for fraternizing with Westerners and attempting to defect, Wolfgang Schmidt will make only his fourth competitive appearance since 1981 in the discus Sunday at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut.

Schmidt, the former world record-holder who was allowed to leave East Germany in November, has been training in San Jose since February with Mac Wilkins, a three-time U.S. Olympian. When Wilkins won the gold medal in 1976, Schmidt was the silver medalist.

Earlier this month, Schmidt competed twice in Florida, finishing third both times, and he won last week in Salinas, Calif., with a throw of 216 feet. In his first competition of the year, Wilkins was third in that meet with a throw of 205-7.

Although Schmidt, 34, said he believes that he is on the verge of again becoming one of the world’s elite throwers, he will not compete in the Olympics this summer. He has West German citizenship but, according to International Amateur Athletic Federation rules, he must wait three years before he becomes eligible for the Olympics.

He could, however, compete in other major international meets after a year, with permission from the East Germans, and is eligible to compete now in lesser meets.

Afraid of jeopardizing their first dual meet with East Germany in June, West German track and field officials say they will not name Schmidt to their team. In that event, West Germany’s best discus throwers, including 1984 Olympic champion Rolf Danneberg, say they will not compete if Schmidt has thrown far enough to earn a place on the team.

Olympic Notes

The IAAF, the international governing body for track and field, has suspended former USC sprinter Pancho Morales for two years. He tested positive for an undisclosed banned substance at an indoor meet Jan. 23 in Portland, Ore. Morales completed his eligibility at USC last year. . . . The Athletics Congress, which governs the sport in the United States, will file papers this week requesting a hearing before an IAAF arbitration panel for hammer thrower Bill Green of Torrance. Green was suspended for two years after a test at the Pan American Games last summer in Indianapolis revealed an excess of the male hormone testosterone.

Olympic trials for synchronized swimming began Monday and will end Saturday in Indianapolis. Defending Olympic gold medalist Tracie Ruiz-Conforto, 25, is entered in the solo competition but expects a challenge from Kristen Babb, 19. . . . The men’s marathon trials are set for Sunday in Jersey City, N.J. . . . Also Sunday, a figure skating exhibition in Bloomington, Minn., will benefit the Foundation for International Ice Skating Advancement. The foundation offers scholarships for developing skaters to 1984 Olympic champion Robin Cousins’ international training center at Lake Arrowhead. . . . The U.S. indoor diving championships begin today in Brown Deer, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb.

Officials from the Turner Broadcasting System and the Soviet Union will announce May 2 that contracts have been signed for the 1994 and 1998 Goodwill Games. The 1990 Goodwill Games are scheduled for Seattle. . . . Freeway Series? Perhaps a promoter could arrange a dual decathlon meet between Britain’s Daley Thompson, the 1984 gold medalist, and West Germany’s Jurgen Hingsen, the 1984 silver medalist. Thompson is training at UC Irvine, Hingsen at UC Santa Barbara.

Thompson has a daughter, Rachel, who weighed only 2 pounds when she was born three months premature in December. “I think she was born early so 1987 wouldn’t be a total waste,” said Thompson, who was injured and finished ninth in the World Championships last summer. Thompson said that Rachel is up to 6 pounds and doing fine. “I’m not as obsessed with winning as I once was,” he said. “I’ve got other things in my life.” Hingsen said he told Thompson that would happen to him. Hingsen has a 15-month-old son.

Bud Greenspan’s “16 Days of Glory, Part II,” a movie about the 1984 Summer Olympics, has been scheduled for an April release in video stores along with the next three installments of his Olympiad Series, “Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin,” “The Marathon,” and “They Didn’t Have a Chance.”