WORLD SPORTS SCENE : He Didn’t Start the Fire, but His Water Bucket Smells of Gasoline

Maybe you’ve heard the radio commercial for a home security company, which uses a burglar as its spokesman. He tells you how to guard your home against criminals.

Here’s the sports version:.

Dr. Jamie Astaphan, who masterminded Ben Johnson’s steroid program for five years, has volunteered to supervise drug testing at the 1992 Olympic Games. He suggested that his Toronto mentor, Dr. Mauro di Pasquale, assist him.

“Nobody could fool either of us,” Astaphan told the Toronto Star from his home on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. “I’ve been there. I know where it’s at. I know where it’s going.”

He no doubt can also figure out where his offer is going--into the International Olympic Committee’s circular file.

Figure skater Christopher Bowman, who lost his title when he withdrew from the national championships because of a bad back, said this week he is 100% fit for next week’s world championships at Halifax, Canada.

“Maybe even better,” he said.

The receptionist at the Ice Castle International Training Center at Lake Arrowhead confirmed that Bowman has been working hard.

When asked if Bowman could come to the telephone, she said, “He’s on the ice.”

What are his practice hours?

“All day,” she said.

In a recent poll, 86.1% of West Germans and 85.4% of East Germans said they would like to see a unified German team in the 1992 Olympics. For German track and field athletes, that might happen as soon as next year’s world championships in Tokyo.

The president of the sport’s governing body, Primo Nebiolo of Italy, is supporting that idea at this week’s meeting of international sports leaders in Rome. He also is promoting Berlin--East, West or both--as the site of the 1995 world championships.

Paul Caligiuri, the midfielder who scored the goal last November that put the United States into this summer’s World Cup in Italy, said he and the team’s coach, Bob Gansler, resolved some of their differences after the 3-1 loss to the Soviet Union last Saturday at Stanford. Caligiuri had suggested that he didn’t start because of his contract dispute with the U.S. Soccer Federation, to which Gansler replied that Caligiuri hasn’t played well enough to start. “Your scrapbook can’t play,” Gansler said.

Now, Caligiuri, who lives in Santa Monica, said he believes he will be in the lineup in Italy. But he doesn’t expect to be under contract. The federation withdrew its offer to him in January, put it back on the table a few weeks later and now is prepared to withdraw it again. The federation wants him to sign a 12-month contract with a one-year option, but he wants an escape clause that would allow him to join a European pro team after the World Cup.

Add Soccer: Roy Wegerle, a forward for the Queens Park Rangers in the English first division, married an American in 1987, but the wedding came a month too late for him to gain his citizenship in time to play for the United States in the World Cup. Wegerle believed that the United States’ No. 1 soccer fan, Henry Kissinger, would help him cut through the red tape. But a spokeswoman for Kissinger Associates told Newsday that the former secretary of state would not get involved.

Italian Coach Azeglio Vicini, whose team has scored only one goal in its last five games, is under attack from Silvio Berlusconi, the television magnate who owns the country’s best first division team, AC Milan. He said his team should represent the country in the World Cup instead of the national team, which has players from several first division clubs. Vicini responded that AC Milan would be merely another team if it didn’t have two Dutch stars, Marco Van Basten and Frank Rijkaard. . . .

Joao Havelange, the Brazilian president of the international soccer federation, wants to change the game from two 45-minute halves to four 25-minute quarters to accommodate television commercials. “Soccer is extremely professional and, as such, should seek all means for increasing revenues,” he told a Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, this week.

But that idea didn’t go over in Europe. An editorial in the Dutch daily, De Telegraaf, suggested that Havelange was making an early April Fool’s Day joke. In the International Herald Tribune, soccer columnist Rob Hughes called for Havelange to resign. “Growth at any price quickly burns itself out,” Hughes wrote. “Such capitulation to U.S. television would not give international soccer a second century.” . . .

Austria, which is in the same four-team World Cup group with the United States, played Egypt to a scoreless tie in an exhibition game this week in Cairo. In Montpelier, France, West Germany lost to France, 2-1.

As indoor track and field increases in popularity in Europe, it is fading in the United States. Fewer than 10,000 turned out for each of the two Los Angeles meets this winter. Fewer than 12,000 were at Madison Square Garden for last week’s national championships. The only meet that drew well was New York’s Millrose Games, which reported an attendance of 16,428. But now its main sponsor, Panasonic, has pulled out. The company reportedly spent $500,000 a year on the meet. . . .

Olympic champion and world record-holder are nice titles, but Jackie Joyner-Kersee should go straight to sainthood. She competed in the Millrose Games on a Friday night in January and was committed to another meet in Fairfax, Va., two days later. So she canceled a Saturday night banquet appearance in Milwaukee. But when she discovered that the group in Milwaukee never got the message, she decided to go there. She missed her flight out of Milwaukee and didn’t arrive at her hotel in Fairfax until 1:30 a.m. Sunday. . . .

Soviet pole vaulter Sergei Bubka told the government he no longer needs its financial support. In his Ukrainian hometown of Donetsk, he is being paid very well to head the new Scientific and Technical Creative Center, which includes a sports complex and a school for pole vaulters.

World Sports Notes

Ben Johnson’s father died of a heart attack last weekend in Falmouth, Jamaica. He was 65. . . . Two professional leagues, the Western Soccer League and the American Soccer League, have merged their business and marketing offices. But it will be at least a year before they begin interleague play. . . . The U.S. and Soviet national basketball teams have agreed to play an exhibition game in the United States on Aug. 4 before going to Argentina for the world championships. Neither team is expected to have NBA players.

Figure skater Jessica Mills, the world junior champion in 1989, qualified for this year’s Olympic Festival in short-track speedskating. Her sister, Phoebe Mills, a bronze medalist in gymnastics at the 1988 Olympics, has turned to diving.

Officials from Salt Lake City’s bid committee for the 1998 Winter Olympics didn’t like suggestions that poor attendance for the national figure skating championships in their city hurt their candidacy. But they acknowledged that they need to do a better job of helping organizers promote their events. Figure skating is usually not a hard sell. . . . The IOC will meet in Athens today to discuss that city’s bid for the 1996 Olympics. Terrorism will be one of the topics. A terrorist group recently claimed responsibility for stealing two bazookas from Greece’s national war museum.