Summer Olympics Notebook : When It Comes to Going the Distance . . . : U.S. Runners Have Been Falling Short

When the Olympic Games begin Saturday in Seoul, there probably won’t be many surprising performances among American men in track competition.

The sprinters and hurdlers will get their share of medals, but the middle- and long-distance runners will be fortunate to get even one medal from the 1,500 meters through the marathon.

It has been surmised that there is a decline in the quality and quantity of American milers, for example, since Jim Ryun competed in the 1960s. And it’s true, Ryun, the lean runner from Kansas, was the last American to hold world records in the mile and 1,500.

Using the Olympic Games and World Championships as a standard, Americans have had only moderate success over the years.

An American hasn’t won the metric mile, the 1,500, in the Olympics since Mel Sheppard in 1908. And, since Sheppard, only six other middle-distance runners have earned Olympic medals. The elite group: Abel Kiviat and Norman Taber, silver and bronze, respectively, in 1912; Lawrence Shields, bronze in 1920, and Glenn Cunningham, Bob McMillen and Ryun, all silver, in 1936, ’52 and ‘68, respectively.

It’s unlikely that the 20-year medal drought in the 1,500, a glamour race, will end in Seoul.

Steve Scott, Jeff Atkinson and Mark Deady aren’t projected to get medals and America’s best middle-distance runner, Jim Spivey, is staying home.

The same forecast holds for the 3,000-meter steeplechase, the 5,000, 10,000 and marathon.

In 1964, in what UCLA track Coach Bob Larsen calls a shooting-star year for Americans, Billy Mills and Bob Schul each won gold medals in the 10,000 and 5,000, respectively, in the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Bill Dellinger, now the track coach at Oregon, distinguished the American cause with a bronze medal in the 5,000.

Only one other American has ever won a medal at that distance--Ralph Hill, a silver, in 1932. The 10,000 medal output is confined to Mills and Louis Tewanima, a silver, in 1912.

The steeplechase and marathon bear out the premise that Americans don’t excel in distance races in international championship meets.

Eight runners have won medals in the steeplechase, but only three since 1932, including Brian Deimer in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Since the Americans swept the marathon in 1904, there have been only four medalists, with only Frank Shorter prominent in the modern era. He won the gold in 1972 and the silver in 1976.

The World Championships were inaugurated in 1983 and are scheduled every four years, a year preceding the Olympic Games. From a pure track standpoint, that competition is unrivaled because the event, so far, has not been diluted by boycotting countries, such as the Olympic Games since 1976.

In the two meets, 1983 and 1987, Scott and Spivey won silver and bronze medals, respectively, in the 1,500. Americans were shut out in every longer distance.

Scott has been America’s premier miler in 10 of the past 11 years, just recently giving way to Spivey. It’s been a commendable reign, but future stars should have been emerging in recent years.

“Up to this year, there has been nobody on the horizon,” Scott said. “But we do have a few that are very promising--Joe Falcon, Mark Deady and Jeff Atkinson. They could be the wave of the future.

“I think the reason why we don’t see more of them is the wrong emphasis on what’s important when they’re young, and a lack of coaches who look to the future instead of the present by overworking the athletes.

“In other countries, athletes work through the system no matter how fast, or slow they are. They aren’t overworked, or over-trained. We’re racing and training our young athletes too much. There’s too much pressure on them to perform at a young age. By the time they get to college, they are burned out on it.”

Scott also concedes there is not as much incentive for young athletes to become middle- or long-distance runners because of the lack of role models.

“There is no one here who is dominating, someone who drives around in a BMW and makes $250,000 for one race,” he said. “Why does anyone want to train that hard if there isn’t a (financial) reward?”

He was undoubtedly alluding to sprinter Carl Lewis, who reportedly received $250,000 for his 100-meter showdown with Canada’s Ben Johnson last month in Zurich, Switzerland.

Larsen, who has been an active coach in distance-running programs for many years, believes that Americans are closer to achieving international recognition than it appears on the surface.

“It’s not like we’re terrible in the distances, but when you’re down 5% you don’t win the big races,” he said. “Here are some things that contribute to that 5% loss:

--”Lucrative road running in the United States. We have road races almost every weekend that are big paydays. And that’s drawing off and tempting some of our best distance runners to race too often.

--”Continuity of coaching. We don’t really have a strong club system in the United States. An athlete goes from high school coach to college coach to no coach.

“A middle-distance runner hits his peak about about 25, or older. For a long-distance runner, it’s about 30 years of age. They run out of coaching when they’re about 22.

“Some stay around the collegiate program, but can anyone tell me that a coach such as Stan Huntsman (at the University of Texas) can give the same attention to a guy who is a graduate student as he will to his own underclassmen? You only have so much energy and so much time and all collegiate coaches spread themselves thin to begin with.

“It’s completely different in Europe. Athletics are not part of the school system at all, so the athlete starts out with a club and is with the same coach until he retires. He might change coaches, but it’s a coordinated effort.

--”Our Olympic trials are held a couple of months before the Games. I think that penalizes the middle- and long-distance runners more than anyone else. It interrupts their training and it just comes at the wrong time. They should be building to the Olympic Games, not the trials. The way it is now they have to peak twice.”

Spivey finished fourth in the Olympic trials last July in the 1,500 and didn’t qualify for the team. He was slightly injured at the time.

Since then, Spivey has been impressive on the European circuit. His winning 1,500-meter time of 3 minutes 31.01 seconds Aug. 28 in Koblenz, West Germany, is the second-fastest time in the world this year. Sydney Maree is the only American to have ever run faster at 3:29.77.

Larsen reasons that the U.S. should adopt the British system for qualifying for the Olympic team--take the first two finishers at the trials with the option to select the third member for the event.

“You only take a third person who is clearly better than the one who finished third in the trials,” Larsen said. “You have to protect that one guy who we feel will be a medalist in the Olympic Games, or World Championships.”

Deady, who finished third in the trials, has a best time of 3:35.82.

Said Scott: “It’s a shame. Spivey has run 3:31 and has nowhere to go. It could have been me instead of him, so I feel for him.”

A Sports Illustrated article last June asserted that the U.S. has run out of milers, citing the fact that a high school athlete hasn’t run a sub-4 minute mile since Marty Liquori did it in 1967.

“I’m not so sure that it’s that important,” Larsen said. “There are more high school races now. There is no need for young runners to go into open competition. High school kids aren’t going to run 4 minutes by themselves. They have to be in a race where they can hang on against older athletes.”