Long Road Turns Out to Be Happy One for Soviet Runners

After surviving the 26 miles and 385 yards of the L.A. Marathon and Tan-off, four Soviet Union runners find themselves in the Sports Arena, at the bottom of a long escalator that is not escalating.

Led by Zoya Ivanova, the overall women’s winner, the Soviets shoulder their equipment bags and begin the long trek. They are halfway up when the escalator comes to life, heading down.

Without a word, the Soviets continue up, four exhausted athletes on a weird American treadmill. They do not become angry or disconcerted. Perhaps they are filled with hope that on this suddenly-moving steel belt, their luggage will appear. You never know.

It has been a long, strange trip for Zoya and her Soviet running mates, who arrived in Los Angeles with no shoes or toothbrushes, after losing at luggage roulette, and will leave with a luxury car, cash, mouse-ear hats and the kind of suntans you just can’t get in Siberia or the Balkans.

A brief travelogue of the two-man, two-woman team:

On the first leg of their journey, the Soviets fly into Frankfurt and run into visa problems. They must wait 18 hours in the airport boarding area, where the longest time a human can survive is maybe 22 hours, before dying of cigarette smoke inhalation or boredom.

Their luggage grows impatient and leaves without them. They finally escape Frankfurt and fly to Los Angeles, where their first encounter with Western culture is a trip to the lost-baggage gulag.

Our visitors then check into the ultra-swank L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills and scramble for toothbrushes and running shoes. The former is easy, the later more difficult. If you’re prepping for a marathon, you don’t just go out and buy a new pair of shoes to train in, unless you want to develop blisters that look like water beds.

Two days before the race, Portugal’s Rosa Mota offers Ivanova a pair of her (Rosa’s) running shoes.

Zoya smiles and replies, “You are too small.”

Running 26 miles with her toes doubled under, now that truly would have been the agony of de feet.

The luggage arrives four days late but two days before the race, which means that the Soviets will not have to run the marathon in terry-cloth hotel robes and Gucci bedroom slippers. Still, their training has been disrupted.

In the big race, under a sunny sky, the Soviets run side by side with an incredibly varied cross-section of Americana, 18,000 entrants with one common bond of brotherhood--all have suffered the heartbreak of lost luggage.

Zoya and Rosa battle for more than 20 miles, then Zoya gradually pulls ahead and wins easily. Olga Dourinina, Zoya’s teammate, finishes third. The Soviet men, Youri Porotov and Fydor Rizhov, run 15th and 22nd.

Zoya becomes an instant hero, in the fashion of this city. She is crowned with the traditional wreath of avocado leaves, and presented a check for $26,000 and the keys to a new Mercedes Benz.

This is a big payday for the 37-year-old Ivanova, who switched from cross-country skiing to long-distance running in 1981, when it became clear that the marathon would be added to the women’s competition in the Olympic Games. She wasn’t at L.A. in ’84 because of the boycott, and before Sunday’s race she had only one marathon victory.

This, then, is a big win, artistically and financially. A good guess is that Zoya will keep about 60% of her purse (the Soviet Track and Field Federation getting the rest), and 100% of her new car.

“Which one would you like?” a Mercedes spokesman asks Zoya as they stand on a presentation platform between a white car and a red car. “The red one?”

Apparently the man assumes Zoya will prefer a car that matches the Soviet’s ruling party, but she goes for the white. When told that she can keep the car or be given a cash equivalent, Ivanova says, “I want the car.”

Back in the Soviet Union, the most popular car is the Zhiguli (pronounced like “jiggily”), which is powered by gerbils running in a round cage. But Ivanova doesn’t even own a Zhiguli. She gets around town on city buses or trollies, occasionally by taxi. She doesn’t even have a driver’s license, yet.

“My (3-year-old) daughter likes to go by taxi,” Ivanova said. “Now I am her taxi driver.”

Zoya would do even better on this trip if she had a sharp agent. Today she and her teammates will visit a certain amusement park in Orange County. It’s the same park that gave Orel Hershiser $50,000 for saying, after winning the World Series, “I’m going to (certain amusement park)!”

The amusement park won’t get a free plug here, because they are giving marathon winner Zoya Ivanova nothing, except free admission and a promise that she won’t be detained at Securityland while Goofy scrutinizes her visa.

Zoya could’ve used that $50,000 to import a German mechanic to her hometown of Alma-ata, Kasakhstan, in Southeastern Russia. You don’t want to trust your Mercedes to a Zhiguli tuneup man.

Throughout their American visit, the Soviet athletes remain exuberant and upbeat. Last seen they are weary but cheery, heading north on that southbound escalator at the Sports Arena. Now they know how the Clippers feel.