Track and Field / Randy Harvey : Some Name Athletes Taking Winter Off

The winter after the Summer Olympics should be one of the best for indoor track and field in the United States because athletes, Americans and foreigners, can use their 5-ring box-office appeal to turn gold, silver and bronze into dollars and cents.

It is something like a victory tour, paid for by promoters who then can advertise that they have a dozen or so Olympic medalists in their meets.

Most promoters, however, will be hard pressed to make such a claim during this U.S. indoor season, which begins Saturday night with the Dallas Morning News Games. Many of the sport’s marquee names have decided to winter elsewhere.

Canada’s Ben Johnson, of course, has no choice, having been sent to the International Amateur Athletic Federation’s penalty box for 2 years after testing positive for steroid use at Seoul.

Neither will we see Florence Griffith Joyner or Sergei Bubka. And Carl Lewis, so far, has committed to only one U.S. meet, the Houston Chronicle Games in his hometown Jan. 28.

Take the money and run? Flojo has done the opposite. She ran and is now taking the money. We have a better chance of catching her with Arsenio Hall on the Fox Channel than with Evelyn Ashford at the Sports Arena.

Bubka, the Soviet pole vaulter who recently was named male athlete of the year by Track & Field News, apparently has enough VCRs in stock from his previous U.S. visits. He won’t need to return until he begins dealing in compact disc players. He plans to compete only in Europe.

The Lewises, Carl and Steve, and their Santa Monica Track Club teammate, Joe DeLoach, also will be seen more in Europe than in the United States. A fourth member of the club, Danny Everett, probably will run in Japan.

U.S. track and field officials should be concerned. If the Santa Monica Track Club is starting a trend, U.S. indoor track could go the same way as U.S. outdoor track. Overseas.

“I’ve always put my athletes in U.S. meets,” said Joe Douglas, manager of the Santa Monica Track Club. “If I had my druthers, they’d be here again this year.”

But Douglas said that Europe and Japan offer better tracks and better pay.

“I have to think of my athletes first,” he said.

At least for now, though, the U.S. indoor circuit remains the most established, and its meets this winter will not be without attractions.

We will see no better high hurdles competition in the world this year than in the Sunkist Invitational next Friday night at the Sports Arena, where 2-time Olympic champion Roger Kingdom will race 2-time world champion Greg Foster and 1988 bronze medalist Tonie Campbell. Andre Phillips, who beat Edwin Moses at Seoul in the intermediate hurdles, also is entered.

Foster is trying to come back after breaking his arm last summer, an injury that prevented him from making the U.S. Olympic team, despite a valiant effort at the trials.

Also trying to come back is Mary Decker Slaney, who had a disappointing Olympics, finishing eighth in the 1,500 and 10th in the 3,000. She was not even the best American in the 3,000 as Villanova’s Vicki Huber finished sixth. Two other Americans, Kim Gallagher in the 800 and Francie Larrieu-Smith, came close at Seoul to breaking two of Slaney’s long-standing American records.

Slaney proved that she is not ready for retirement by winning the Fifth Avenue Mile after the Olympics. But apparently not everyone was impressed.

After a 14-year relationship with Slaney, Nike officials decided that she no longer was worth a 6-figure annual contract and proposed a substantial cut this year. She turned that down, then announced Thursday that she does not have a shoe sponsor but that she will be competing for the L’eggs Running Club.

So it is important for her to re-establish herself as one of the world’s best middle-distance runners this winter. She will be tested. Romania’s Paula Ivan, the Olympic 1,500 champion, and the Soviet Union’s Tatiana Samolenko, the Olympic 3,000-meter champion, are expected to compete in the United States. Samolenko and Slaney may meet in The Los Angeles Times/Eagle Games Feb. 17 at the Forum.

Morocco’s Said Aouita also has something to prove. He entered the Olympics boasting that he could win the 800, 1,500 and 5,000. But he settled for third in the 800, couldn’t make it to the starting line for the semifinals in the 1,500 because of an injury and didn’t enter the 5,000.

He continues to boast that he is the world’s fastest man from the 1,500 through the 10,000, although some close to him claim that he has run himself into the ground. We will see, perhaps as early at the Feb. 3 Millrose Games at New York, where he could meet Kenya’s Julius Kariuki, the Olympic steeplechase champion, in the 3,000.

And then there is Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who has nothing to prove but will keep trying anyway.

Whatever the amount that U.S. promoters pay her, it is not enough by half. Yet, in the case of the Times/Eagle meet, she waived her fee so that it could be donated to a charity benefiting sports programs for needy children in Los Angeles. Much of her time, energy and money already go toward a similar program that she established in her native East St. Louis.

Joyner-Kersee not only is the sport’s best athlete but also its best ambassador. She may compete in Japan this winter, but she also has commitments to 3 U.S. indoor meets, including Saturday’s at Dallas, and may enter 3 others.

Although there is little doubt that she would rather compete in the long jump, her husband-coach, Bob Kersee, wants her to concentrate on the high hurdles. This has been on ongoing battle between them.

“I’ve decided to soothe his ego by entering the hurdles,” she said.

That was before she learned from meet director Will Kern during a luncheon last week that the Soviet Union’s Galina Chistyakova, the world record-holder in the long jump, will compete at the Times/Eagle meet.

When the luncheon ended, Joyner-Kersee pulled Kern aside and said, “Don’t count me out of the long jump.”

Track Notes

Brian Bridgewater, who won the state high school 200-meter championship last year for Washington High, is sprinting for Long Beach City College. He has entered the 60 meters at the Sunkist meet against a field that includes Houston McTear, Nigeria’s Chidi Imoh and Roy Martin.

The Athletics Congress, which governs track and field in the United States, will have a third hearing Jan. 18 in San Jose for the U.S. athletes and administrators who competed last fall in South Africa. Two previous hearings have resulted in indefinite suspensions for 10 athletes and an administrator. Among the athletes expected to attend this hearing are Olympians John Powell, Carol Cady and Ruth Wysocki. TAC officials say that they will rule on the length of the suspensions by the end of this month. . . . TAC named Carl Lewis and Florence Griffith Joyner as its athletes of the year for 1988.

Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe, 2-time Olympic champion in the 1,500, decided not to retire after being left off the British team that went to Seoul last summer. He will compete in the 800 meters at the European indoor meet next month. Another British runner who appeared as if he might be finished with the sport, David Moorcroft, is returning to the indoor circuit tonight at Hamilton, Canada. He has entered the 3,000 next Friday night at the Sports Arena. Moorcroft, a former world record-holder at 5,000 meters, was the subject of a touching profile in Bud Greenspan’s film after the 1984 Olympic Games.

Several track athletes are among the Olympians expected to attend a U.S. Olympic Committee career-counseling seminar Saturday at the Amateur Athletic Foundation in Los Angeles to discuss their lives after sports. . . . Mike Tully has recovered from Achilles tendon surgery and will compete Saturday at Barcelona in a meet for pole vaulters only.

Organizers of the first Canadian indoor meet of the winter a week ago at Saskatoon were a little shortsighted. After remarkable times were recorded in the 1,500 and the 800, they decided to measure the track. They discovered that it wasn’t long enough. . . . When Primo Nebiolo resigned under pressure as the president of the Italian track and field federation, speculation was that he also would step down as president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation. But he denies it. He said he was forced out in Italy because of politics, not because of alleged corruption within the federation.