Track : Foster Breaks Arm Playing Basketball

When his bold attempt to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team last summer, despite a broken left arm, ended in pain and frustration, hurdler Greg Foster dropped his track shoes into the nearest trash can. Perhaps that also should have been the fate of his basketball sneakers.

His comeback was put on hold Monday night, when he again broke his left arm while playing basketball. He underwent surgery Tuesday morning at UCLA Medical Center.

“He definitely won’t be back for the rest of the indoor season,” said Bob Kersee, Foster’s adviser. “My plan is to let Greg take a 2- or 3-month vacation. I don’t see him getting back on the track for 3 to 5 months.”

After breaking the arm during a workout July 4, and contrary to his doctor’s advice, Foster, 30, entered the high hurdles at the Olympic trials only 18 days later.

Running with 12 screws and a metal plate in the arm, he advanced through two rounds on the first day. But he was eliminated the next day, when he hit a couple of hurdles and was unable to finish the semifinals.

Even though he still had the plate in his arm, and he sometimes complained that it bothered him, he was beginning to look like the Foster of old in his first three races of the indoor season.

He beat two-time Olympic gold medalist Roger Kingdom at Dallas, then barely lost to him a week later in the Sunkist meet in the Sports Arena. Foster also won last Saturday at Houston. Foster and Kingdom were scheduled to meet Friday night in the Millrose Games at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“He was just starting to get his wheels going,” Kersee said. “He had a hard time getting back to his drills for the indoor season because of what happened last year. I can imagine there will be a fear factor of trying to come back again. His doctor told him that he absolutely can’t fall on the arm again.”

For the second straight year, the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. has lost its defending 400-meter champion before his eligibility expired. The NCAA has no one to blame but itself for not modernizing its rules so that its best track athletes can afford to remain in school.

In 1988, Butch Reynolds left Ohio State before his senior year to compete on the international circuit, which allows him to accept appearance fees, shoe and apparel contracts and endorsement deals.

This year, UCLA senior Danny Everett chose the same route. Timing was the overwhelming factor in his decision. This was the year for him to cash in on his 1988 Olympic medals, a bronze in the open 400 and a gold in the 1,600- meter relay.

Even on the international circuit, athletes such as Reynolds and Everett do not become wealthy overnight. To retain their International Amateur Athletic Federation eligibility, they have to put all of the money they earn above expenses into a trust fund. But their earnings, with interest, do become available to them upon retirement.

The NCAA should adopt the same rule. Track is not likely ever to be a revenue-producing sport for universities, but it would generate more interest, and perhaps more dollars, if the stars did not feel compelled to leave.

Discus thrower Kamy Keshmiri, the Track & Field News high school athlete of the year in 1987, has left UCLA for personal reasons, said Bill Bennett, a spokesman for the university’s athletic department.

Keshmiri reportedly has enrolled at Nevada Reno in his hometown, but officials in the university’s sports information department could not confirm it Tuesday.

It is a significant loss for the Bruins. Keshmiri was redshirted as a freshman because of a knee injury, but he regained his strength in time to finish second in the World Junior Championships last summer at Sudbury, Canada.

A race in the mile between Mary Decker Slaney, who won the 1,500 and the 3,000 in the 1983 World Championships at Helsinki, and the Soviet Union’s Tatiana Samolenko, who won the same double 4 years later in the World Championships at Rome, was expected to be one of the main events in the Times/Eagle Games at the Forum Feb. 17.

But meet director Will Kern said Tuesday that Slaney and Samolenko may not race each other, after all.

After Slaney had set the American record in the 1,000 meters--2 minutes 37.6 seconds--a couple of weeks ago at Portland, her agent told Kern that Slaney wanted to try for the world record, 2:34.8, in the event at the Forum.

That distance might be too short for Samolenko, who won the 1988 Olympic gold medal in the 3,000 and the bronze medal in the 1,500.

Track Notes

At the Millrose Games Friday night, Mary Slaney is entered in the mile against Romania’s Paula Ivan, who won two medals at Seoul . . . The meet will feature the first U.S. indoor appearance of Morocco’s Said Aouita, who will run in the 3,000. Outdoors, Aouita holds world records in the 1,500, 2,000 and 5,000.