U.S. Track and Field Trials Notes : Despite Risks, Foster Says He Will Run Hurdles

After working out here for five days, Greg Foster said Monday that he will attempt to make the U.S. Olympic track and field team by competing in the 110-meter hurdles competition, which begins Friday.

Foster, who broke his left arm in two places on July 4, said two doctors advised him against competing, telling him that he risks permanent damage to the arm if he breaks it again.

“I know I’m risking it,” Foster said. “But that’s a risk I’m going to take. The doctors told me not to take it, but they’re not in my shoes.”

While speaking with reporters, Foster, who lives in Chino Hills, wore a shoulder-to-wrist cast on his arm, but he was holding a lighter elbow-to-wrist cast that he will wear during competition.

“Personally, I don’t want to run with either one,” he said.

Officials of The Athletics Congress (TAC), which governs track and field in the United States, might also prefer that. They have discussed whether to allow Foster into the field with a cast. One option would be to place him in lane one, where his left arm would be on the infield-side of the track and would not pose a threat to a hurdler in the next lane.

One of his competitors, Tonie Campbell of Ontario, said he doesn’t care if Foster wears a cast.

“It’s not aiding him in any way,” he said. “It’s keeping him together.”

Then, joking, he said, “If I’m in back of him, getting hit, it might bother me.”

Foster, a two-time world champion, said he has been inspired by his adviser, Bob Kersee.

“Bobby is one reason I can do it,” Foster said when asked whether he has a realistic chance of finishing among top three and making his third Olympic team. “He believes I can still make the team, and I believe him.

“I’m not a quitter. It’s just that simple.”

Reporters from the German Press Agency reached East German sprint champion Marlies Gohr Monday to get for her reaction to Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world record of 10.49 Saturday in the 100 meters. Gohr, a former world record-holder, has a personal best of 10.83.

“Duesen an den fuessen,” she said.

In English, it translates to “Jets on her feet.”

But it sounds better in German.

Peter Hein, who coaches East German sprinter Heike Drechsler, said: “This is a men’s time. It’s a record for the decades. But the chicks will be counted in Seoul.”

That’s not a sexist remark. It just means that Griffith-Joyner shouldn’t count her . . . well, you know the cliche.

When Hein said that 10.49 is a men’s time, he obviously wasn’t talking about the United States, where Carl Lewis won the 100 meters Saturday in 9.78 (wind-aided), or East Germany, where the best time this year is Sven Matthes’ 10.18. But he could have been talking about West Germany, where Christian Haas’ 10.50 is the best time this year.

Roy Martin was the sensation--junior division--of the 1984 track and field trials in Los Angeles. A senior-to-be at a Dallas high school, he finished fourth in the 200 meters. All three of the runners who beat him won Olympic medals later that summer.

But Martin did not develop into an outstanding college sprinter. After he graduated from high school, he went to Southern Methodist University for two years, flunked out and landed at Texas Southern, where he was ineligible to compete last season.

In April, he moved in with Kersee and his wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, in Long Beach.

Martin has not done much so far this season, but he looked good in the first two rounds of the 200 meters Monday. He won both of his heats to advance to Wednesday’s semifinals. The final also is scheduled for Wednesday.

At least he looked good to an untrained eye.

His coach, Kersee, scolded him after the second heat for not running the curve aggressively.

A few minutes later, while Martin was giving an interview, Kersee interrupted him in mid-sentence and ordered him out of the press tent.

“Get out of here,” Kersee said. “You haven’t done anything yet.”

Later, Kersee was asked about the rumor that Martin will transfer to UCLA next fall.

“We haven’t discussed it yet,” he said. “I believe in education. He needs to be in school. But when and where we won’t decide until after the 200 meters in Seoul.”

Denean Howard, who finished second in the 400 Monday night, said earlier this year that she would postpone her wedding to World Boxing Assn. light-heavyweight champion Virgil Hill until after the Olympics if she made the U.S. team.

But after earning her berth on the team, she announced that she and Hill, a 1984 Olympian, were married May 10.

Overlooked in the excitement over Griffith-Joyner’s 10.49 in a quarterfinal heat Saturday was Angela Burnham’s time in the next heat. She advanced to Sunday’s semifinals with a legal 11.28, the fourth-best time ever for a high school girl. Only two high school girls have ever run faster.

Burnham, 16, who will be a senior next year at Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard, finished last in her semifinal heat in 11.43 and did not advance to the final.

Quincy Watts of Taft High School in Woodland Hills and Brian Bridgewater of Washington High School in Los Angeles, both seniors this year, advanced past the first round in the 200 meters Monday. Watts was fourth in his heat in 20.84, and Bridgewater was fifth in his heat in 21.45.

But neither advanced past the second round.