Greg Foster Coming Back, Will Run in Meet at UCLA

A long scar runs down his twice-broken left arm and two plates and 10 screws hold it together, but two-time 110-meters hurdles world champion Greg Foster is back in action.

“I still think I have what it takes,” the 30-year-old Californian said. “I still feel I can break the world record, and there’s no doubt about that.”

The pain is still there from the two breaks--once while practicing July 4, 1988, and the second while playing basketball last Jan. 31--and doctors have told him they would not want to operate again if he broke it once more.

“It’s almost like he has said, ‘To hell with the arm,’ ” said Bob Kersee, his coach and the husband-coach of Jackie Joyner-Kersee. “If anything, he is over-using the arm now.”

The 1983 and ’87 world champion will run his first outdoor hurdles race in almost a year at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Invitational next Saturday at UCLA. Then he plans to go after the U.S. spot for the World Cup in Barcelona by winning the hurdles at the June 15-17 U.S. nationals in Houston.

Then it will be off to Europe and a full season of racing.

“My first race will be Stockholm on July 3,” Foster said. “Then I’ll run Nice, London, Zurich, Berlin, Cologne and Brussels.”

He has been back at work since March 1 and he scoffs at suggestions that his first race will be a courageous one.

“Injuries are part of growing up,” he said.

But he and Kersee try to be protective. When Foster’s practice sessions are most serious, Kersee lowers the 42-inch high hurdles to 39 inches and puts a three-inch protective pad on the hurdles Foster is attempting to clear.

“That way if he hits the top of the hurdle he’ll hit the pad rather than bang the hurdle, which reduces his chances of falling,” said Kersee after supervising a workout at the BYU track.

Foster said the pain was still there, though it was more of a dull ache. “Sometimes when I wake up, it feels bad,” he said, holding up the scar-torn arm. “But once I warm up I feel better and the pain eases up.”

While some will call his first race a comeback attempt, Foster doesn’t view it that way. “The comeback has already happened,” he said. “It came the day I stepped on the track and attacked the hurdles for the first time again.”