Brazilian Track Coach Maintains Low Profile and Fast Runners

Luiz de Oliveira, a Brazilian middle-distance coach, has a reputation for keeping his runners’ times low. Seems he works on his profile in much the same manner.

De Oliveira heads a somewhat nomadic group of runners now living in San Diego. When he left Brazil in search of greener training grounds in 1981, he originally settled in Provo, Utah. That lasted three months.

His next stop was Eugene, Ore. That lasted until last summer, at which time he packed up again and moved to San Diego.

“I’ve just been doing things quietly since moving here at the beginning of June,” he said recently.

Quietly? Try secretively. De Oliveira, whose success once lured Mary Slaney to his stable in Eugene, now works out of a small cubicle in a nondescript, two-story office building on the 7300 block of El Cajon Boulevard.

There are no running ovals next door, no jogging trails nearby, no weight rooms in the vicinity; just doughnut shops, video stores and dilapidated motels.

It’s no place to train athletes, but for now it will do as a place to set up a desk, plug in the computer and track the development of his runners, two of whom--Jose Luiz Barbosa and Ocky Clark--will run the 1,000 meters in tonight’s Times/Eagle Games at the Forum in Inglewood.

The humble headquarters belie de Oliveira’s reputation as a top-flight coach.

Yes, he worked with Mary Slaney for two years through the 1988 Seoul Olympics, at which she finished eighth in the 1,500 meters at 4:02.49. But de Oliveira is known more for developing Joaquim Cruz into one of the best 800-meter runners ever.

Cruz speaks of de Oliveira’s devotion to his runners. And perhaps it is that devotion that keeps de Oliveira from managing a full-fledged club, with it’s own track and training facilities.

Seems de Oliveira is more concerned with running a club for athletes, whom he considers friends, rather than operating it as a business.

He took no money from his runners until 1986, and then did so only at their insistence.

“In 1986, I talked to him,” Cruz said. “I said, ‘Luiz, this is not fair to you. We have to give you something. You have a family to support.’ We decided to give him a percentage of what we get from contracts and from races. But still, that is a very small amount.”

The money de Oliveira gets from his runners is only a supplement. His main income comes from consulting work he does for Adidas.

But he is a coach first.

“He totally enjoys what he is doing,” Cruz said.

In the world of track and field, de Oliveira is something of a guru. He is to middle-distance running what Jenny Craig is to the heavy-set. Those who adopt his program shed unwanted seconds from their personal bests.

His athletes swear by his methods.

The results?

--Barbosa ran personal bests at 800 meters in three consecutive European meets in 1988: a 1:43.59 in Holland, a 1:43.49 in Italy and a 1:43.20 in Zurich, Switzerland.

--Cruz has turned in six of the 12 sub-1:43 800 meters ever run, and his 1:41.77, the South American record, is just four-hundredths of a second off Sebastian Coe’s world record.

--During last year’s indoor season, Clark, who had been training under de Oliveira for a little more than a year, set two American indoor records, the first in the 1,000 meters (2:18.19, bettering Don Paige’s 2:18.88) and the second in the 800 meters (1:46.07, bettering Johnny Gray’s 1:46.1). Clark’s 800 record stood only a week before Ray Brown showed up in Athens and became the first American to run under 1:46 indoors (1:45.85).

Of the records, Clark said: “It had to have been the training with Luiz that helped out.”

De Oliveira points to his schooling when asked about his success.

“In (Brazil), you don’t just become a coach by reading a book,” said de Oliveira, who earned a teacher’s degree in physical education from the University of San Carlos in 1973. To earn his degree, de Oliveira took 30 months of specialized courses in track-and-field training.

While de Oliveira talks of his knowledge of biology and biomechanics, his athletes see a strength of a different sort.

“The most important thing about Luiz,” Barbosa said, “is our relationship with him. He is friendly, like a dad and son. He’s concerned about our health, about how we’re eating. He’s concerned whether we’re sleeping good.”

Cruz traces that concern to a time when he was a 12-year-old basketball player and de Oliveira was the team’s coach.

De Oliveira then encouraged all children to focus on more than one sport. For Cruz, basketball, not track, was his love.

“Everybody knew that I hated (running),” Cruz said. “At the time I was just a kid, and I was having a lot of fun playing basketball. I saw the kids who were in track practicing, and I thought, ‘These kids are not having fun.’ ”

Soon, Cruz was not having fun, too. De Oliveira, following his multiple-sport philosophy, more or less forced Cruz to compete in a San Paulo track meet.

Cruz won the 1,500 meters with a time of 4:19.1 and, much to his chagrin, earned a berth in the national meet.

“I remember I stayed away from basketball practice for a week because I wanted Luiz to forget about the idea of me ever running again,” Cruz said.

It didn’t work. When Cruz showed up to practice on the following Monday, de Oliveira told him, “If you were my kid, you would have been spanked by now.”

And de Oliveira got his way. Cruz said he ran in the national meet and finished third at 4:02.9.

For several years, Cruz ran against his will. But in 1981, he embraced the sport and set a junior world record in the 800 meters at 1:44.3.

De Oliveira still takes an active interest in his athletes’ lives. He forces them to consider where their lives are heading after their track careers end.

He has encouraged Cruz to finish work on his teaching degree in physical education at Point Loma Nazarene College. Barbosa is studying journalism at San Diego City College, and Clark is taking classes at San Diego State.

“He’s concerned with us getting a good education and tells us this, running, is a fantasy we only have for a little while.

“And he’s concerned with our personality as well. He says first you are a human being and second you are an athlete.”

And now De Oliveira is thinking about raising his profile in San Diego. He figures a good way to deal with drug addiction among youths is to get to them before they get to drugs. And maybe, he says, he and his world-class runners can encourage some to try track and field instead.

His plan is take his troupe on a tour of local high schools to give clinics. But he lacks the funding to set up such a program and is currently looking for a sponsor.

Another problem, de Oliveira says, is that many kids find running a bore.

“But I think we can make it fun, you know?”