TAC Delivers 7 More Suspensions : Petranoff, Others Who Went to South Africa Are Punished

Seven more track and field athletes, among them Tom Petranoff, former world record-holder in the javelin, were suspended indefinitely Thursday by The Athletics Congress, the sport’s U.S. governing body, for their participation this fall in a series of meets in South Africa.

The Athletics Congress serves as the U.S. agent of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which does not sanction meets in South Africa because of that government’s official policy of racial separation.

The suspensions were announced by Richard Hollander, a lawyer from Richmond, Va., and chairman of a three-member TAC review panel, after a 5 1/2-hour hearing at a Covina hotel. At the hearing were four athletes and Coach Ted Banks of Riverside Community College, one of the U.S. contingent’s administrators during the South African tour.

Besides Petranoff, other athletes suspended were hurdler Milan Stewart, shotputter Dave Laut, sprinters Cedric Gilder and James Andrews, hurdler Keith Thibodeaux and long jumper Kevin Atkins.

Because TAC has no jurisdiction over college athletics, however, Gilder, Andrews, Thibodeaux and Atkins, who attend Riverside Community College, will retain their eligibility for competition against other collegians.

The panel postponed a decision on Banks because of a disagreement between opposing attorneys over whether TAC can suspend someone who is not a member of the organization. The attorneys were instructed to file their opinions with the panel by Jan. 6.

Three other athletes, pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus, long jumper Tyrus Jefferson and distance runner Ray Wicksell, and an administrator, Dick Tomlinson, were suspended indefinitely after a hearing at Chicago Nov. 18.

A third hearing for the four remaining athletes involved in the meets, discus thrower John Powell, shotputter Carol Cady, middle-distance runner Ruth Wysocki and half-miler James Robinson, and administrator Skip Robinson, the coach at Pasadena City College, has been scheduled for Jan. 18 at San Jose.

Hollander said that the panel, which also includes attorneys Frank Greenberg of Philadelphia and Rich Nichols of San Francisco, will determine between then and the end of January the exact length of the suspensions for the athletes and administrators.

The panel, Hollander said, will consider “the culpability of the athletes and the conditions under which they made their decisions to go to South Africa.”

Nichols said that each case will be decided separately.

“The athletes went as a group to compete, but it’s not fair to adjudicate them as a group,” he said. “It’s only fair to judge each athlete as an individual.”

Nichols expressed sympathy in particular for the Riverside Community College athletes. After listening to testimony by Thibodeaux and Andrews, the two Riverside athletes who attended Thursday’s hearing, Nichols said that he was not convinced that they understood the potential consequences that competing in South Africa could have on their post-collegiate track and field careers.

Much of the questioning directed toward Banks concerned whether he had advised the Riverside athletes to participate in the tour.

“All of us recognize that a coach has tremendous sway over his athletes, but it’s my feeling that Ted did try to protect his athletes,” said Banks’ attorney, George E. Berry of Santa Monica. “He invited the kids, but he didn’t advise them to go.”

Berry also said that he would have preferred for the hearing to be conducted by an independent arbitrator instead of a panel appointed by TAC. Greenberg recently was elected TAC president.

If the athletes or administrators choose to appeal the review panel’s ultimate decisions, they must again take their cases before an arm of TAC, the Board of Directors, at a meeting at Indianapolis March 12.

By far, the most impassioned plea before the panel Thursday was submitted by Petranoff, a 2-time Olympian from Oceanside.

In the more than 3 hours before he was called to testify, he paced at the back of the conference room like a bull about to be unleashed into the arena, sometimes making snorting noises and interrupting whenever he felt necessary.

When Thibodeaux, in responding to a question about the athletes he had witnessed participating in the meets, said that he had not seen Petranoff compete, the javelin thrower feigned indignation.

“You mean you didn’t watch me?” he said.

Petranoff demanded that he be heard before a lunch break, waving his prepared statement in the air and contending that the TAC attorney, Alvin Chriss, did not want to hear from the javelin thrower “because he’s afraid of what I’ve got on this sheet of paper.”

But when called upon to present his case, Petranoff read only a few paragraphs from the statement, spending the remainder of his time in a rambling discourse that centered on the lack of financial support from TAC and the U.S. Olympic Committee for track and field athletes.

Petranoff, however, strongly denied that he had participated in the meets for financial reasons. He said that he had received $35,000 for competing in all 4 meets, which were sponsored primarily by Trek Petroleum of South Africa.

“Everyone says that I did this because I’m near the end of my career and that I went for the money,” said Petranoff, 30. “But I don’t care what anyone thinks. I know why I went down there.

“I’m not pro-South Africa. I’m pro-sports. I just want to be a javelin thrower who can be a friend of the Russians and the South Africans and whoever. I just want to see everybody get along.”

Petranoff accused the IAAF and TAC of hypocrisy for taking action against athletes for participating in South Africa while at the same time accepting sponsorship money from Mobil Oil, which conducts business in South Africa.

Greenberg responded that Mobil follows fair-employment guidelines in the country endorsed by the Reagan Administration and the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan of Philadelphia, the author of a set of principles used for more than a decade as a code of conduct for U.S. companies in South Africa. Sullivan, however, abandoned the principles in June, 1987, claiming that they have not discouraged racial segregation and calling for all U.S. companies to withdraw from South Africa.

“If you feel I have to be suspended, that’s fine because I’m fed up with all the politics,” Petranoff said. “I’ll quit right now. My tolerance level has snapped. Everyone says I’m so emotional about it. You’re damn right I’m emotional.”

More restrained was Stewart, a hurdler from West Covina who has been a member of several U.S. teams. He said that, as a black athlete, he wanted to see for himself the conditions for blacks in South Africa and that he believed he helped young black athletes by participating in clinics.

“I can’t understand how I’m being bad or wrong or doing anything illegal because I’ve been over there to try to help some people,” he said. “I feel good about going down there. When I go down there again, I’ll go to more black townships and educate some more people.”