U.S. OLYMPIC TRACK AND FIELD TRIALS : Notebook : Foster Says He’ll Return for Indoor Campaign

As soon as Greg Foster entered the interview tent after failing to qualify for the final Saturday in the 110-meter hurdles, he took off his bright yellow track shoes and dumped them into the nearest trash can.

But Foster, who will turn 30 in August, said that does not mean he is retiring from the sport.

“I’ve been running for 17 years without a year off,” said Foster, who ran in the Olympic trials despite breaking his left arm in two places on July 4. “This will be my summer off. I’ll come back next indoor season.

“I’ll be around for at least the indoor world championships (next winter in Budapest). After that, I don’t know. I still haven’t won a gold medal (in the Olympics), and a gold medal is a gold medal whether it’s in 1988 or 1992.”

He said he would not go to Seoul for the Olympics.

“Not unless one of the networks wants to pick me up and take me with them.”

Even though Foster said his doctors told him that he would risk permanent damage to the arm if he broke it again, he said he never thought about not competing here.

“Like everybody told me, my mother would have been very proud of me, and that’s all that counts right now,” he said.

Foster’s mother was killed in an automobile accident near her home outside Chicago in 1985.

When Mark Deady of Indiana University sprinted to the finish line in the 1,500 meters, the man he edged for third place and a place on the Olympic team by 11-hundredths of a second was his landlord, Jim Spivey.

Deady rents a condominium that Spivey, an Indiana University alumnus who lives in Glen Ellyn, Ill., owns in Bloomington, Ind.

Asked if he thinks he’s in for a rent increase, Deady said, “I’m moving out.”

Deady said Spivey also has helped coach him.

“In a sense, I feel sorry for Jim,” he said. “He’s helped everyone at IU.”

Wearing a “Mac is Back” T-shirt, Mac Wilkins, 37, made his fourth Olympic team in the discus throw. As the 1976 Olympic champion, he was an inspiration to Mike Buncic, who will turn 26 Monday.

After finishing second to Wilkins Saturday, Buncic said, “When he won his gold medal in the Olympics, I think I was 14. In fact, I think I turned 14 on the day he won it. I hadn’t even thrown a discus before at that time. I had no idea I might end up like this.”

Actually, Wilkins’ victory in Montreal came a little later in the summer than Buncic’s birthday, but it makes a better story the way he tells it.

Buncic, who is from Fair Lawn, N.J. but trains in San Jose, didn’t move into the top three Saturday until the fifth of his six throws, and he advanced to second ahead of Randy Heisler on his last throw.

Wilkins encouraged him throughout the competition.

“I told him that if he didn’t start throwing that thing I’d slap him upside the head,” said Wilkins, who also trains in San Jose. “I told him I’d kick his fanny all the way to San Jose.

“I told him, ‘Forget about doing it right. Just get in there and do it hard.’ ”

Seven women made the team Saturday in a second event, Florence Griffith- Joyner (100) in the 200, Jackie Joyner-Kersee (heptathlon) in the long jump, Mary Slaney (3,000) in the 1,500, Kim Gallagher (800) in the 1,500, Gwen Torrence (100) in the 200 and Ramona Pagel (shotput) and Connie Price (shotput) in the discus.

The only man who made the team in more than one event was Carl Lewis, who finished first in the 100 and long jump and second in the 200.

The head men’s coach, Stan Huntsman, and the head women’s coach, Terry Crawford, announced the candidates for the 400 and 1,600 meter relay teams in Seoul.

Men’s 400: Lewis, Dennis Mitchell, Calvin Smith, Albert Robinson and Mike Marsh.

Men’s 1,600: Butch Reynolds, Danny Everett, Steve Lewis, Kevin Robinzine, Antonio McKay and Andrew Valmon.

Women’s 400: Griffith-Joyner, Evelyn Ashford, Torrence, Sheila Echols, Alice Brown, Dannette Young, Jennifer Innis and Gail Devers-Roberts.

Women’s 1,600: Diane Dixon, Denean Howard, Valerie Brisco, Lillie Leatherwood, Sherri Howard, Maicel Malone, Jearl Miles and Terri Dendy.

With three rounds in each relay, and substitutions possible from one round to the next, all may run in Seoul.

Crawford would not rule out the possibility that Griffith-Joyner might also run on the 1,600 meter relay team.

Griffith-Joyner Fashion Note of the Day:

In the 200-meter final, she wore a white fishnet two-legger that she called a negligee.

“I’m like everyone else,” said her coach, Bob Kersee. “I just wait to see what she has on when she drops the warm-up suit. That last one was the sexiest.

“If I was her husband, I sure would be wondering how much farther she could go.”

Fred Lebow, director of the New York Marathon, tripped while jogging in downtown Indianapolis and broke his left wrist. Wearing a shoulder-to-wrist cast with his arm in a sling, he was stopped at the track Saturday by Greg Foster, who insisted on signing the cast.

Times columnist Mike Downey contributed to this story.