TRACK AND FIELD / INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS : Jennings Leads a Fast Crowd

If she had her way, PattiSue Plumer would not have competed Friday night at Madison Square Garden.

She is taking the bar exam Tuesday, and has been suffering from a cold for a week. The Mobil Grand Prix Indoor Track and Field Championships was the furthest thing on her mind.

She had no choice. As an athlete funded by The Athletics Congress, she was committed to the national governing body’s indoor meet. When Plumer asked to be excused, she was told her reasons were not valid.

She thought that was unfair, but was not about to relinquish her $800 a month stipend for being one of America’s best distance runners.

So all Plumer did was start quickly and turn the women’s 3,000 meters into the meet’s best race, finishing second to Lynn Jennings of Newmarket, N.H.

Jennings set a U.S. indoor record with a time of 8 minutes 40.45 seconds, followed by Plumer in 8:41.45 and Vickie Huber of Philadelphia in 8:42.13. All were faster than the previous mark of 8:44.68, set by Lesley Lahane in 1987.

Plumer, who also finished second in the mile, does not believe the rule forcing TAC’s elite athletes to compete in its major events is applied evenly.

She was not the only runner upset with the TAC Friday night.

Steve Scott, finishing the mile and his indoor season impressively, thought he won until learning that the finish tape was not really the finish.

Confused? So was Scott, who discovered the discrepancy after a victory lap in front of an appreciative crowd of 11,849. Instead of winning, he ended in a dead heat with Marcus O’Sullivan of Ireland.

“You’ve got to have the finish at the finish line,” Scott said. “It is a false sense of where the finish line is, and that is the fault of TAC.”

Scott, of Encinitas, and O’Sullivan were timed in 3:57.35. Neither could remember a tie in a mile, at least not in such an important meet.

“I thought Steve had won it,” O’Sullivan said.

When he was told that the tape was six inches ahead of the actual finish line, O’Sullivan changed his opinion.

The reason the tape is not the true finish is because it would interfere with the automatic photo timer, said TAC official Howard Schmertz.

After officials examined a photograph of the finish, they concurred that the runners were even.

Scott and O’Sullivan contended that most races have light strings to designate the finish, but Schmertz disagreed.

Scott lost $2,000 in prize money because of the official result.

“I feel a little cheated,” said Scott, whose sprint in the last 100 yards caught O’Sullivan on the outside.

“There are so many lines out there you don’t know where the finish is. You need to use a tape as a judge.”

Plumer, who lives in Mountain View, Calif., and recently finished law school at Stanford, was not worried about her finishes.

Or her starts.

“I didn’t want to run,” she said. “If I had done well or poorly, it would have been a distraction.”

After a personal record in the 3,000, Plumer got into the spirit of competition. Against her coach’s best wishes, she jumped into the mile race.

“I walked over and the race was about to go off,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, why not try.’ ”

She was not strong enough to challenge Romania’s Doina Melinte, who won in 4:27.62. Plumer finished second to the indoor record-holder in 4:31.29.

Roger Kingdom, the world record-holder in the 110-meter hurdles, lost in a stunning upset to Tony Dees and Arthur Blake in the 55-meter hurdles.

Dees, who is training at the University of Tampa in Florida, started in the second lane and pulled away from the field. That sounds more like the way Kingdom destroys his opponents.

Dees’ winning time of 7.03 seconds was just ahead of Blake in 7.09. Kingdom was at 7.12, followed by Tonie Campbell in 7.16.

“I was stuck in the (starting blocks) box again,” Kingdom said. “But I have to give Tony credit, he ran an excellent race.”

In the meet’s other outstanding performance, Hollis Conway won the high jump in 7 feet 8 1/2 inches, an event record. Conway held off Romania’s Sorin Matei who cleared 7-7 1/4.

Track Notes

Brian Cooper of Florida, winner of the 55-meter dash, has suffered through one personal drama after another. In June, he chipped a bone in his foot. In September, his girlfriend, Krisden Tanuve was murdered in Huntington Beach when a former lover fatally shot her and then himself. In November, his mother suffered a heart attack. Then he reinjured his foot. “I only had two weeks of practice, I knew what was ahead of me,” he said.