ROUNDUP : Deal, Williams, Steely Set Track and Field Marks

A lack of marquee names didn’t keep three U.S. Olympic Festival track and field records from being broken Thursday, the first day of competition.

Lance Deal of Casper, Wyo., threw the hammer farther than any American this year, while Schowanda Williams of Baton Rouge, La., set a festival record in the 400-meter hurdles and Shelly Steely of Eugene, Ore., broke the 10,000-meter record.

Skies around the Twin Cities cleared Thursday, allowing the baseball medal games to be played one day late. Aaron Knieper of Saginaw, Mich., pitched 6 2/3 innings, had two hits and drove in four runs as the North beat the West, 7-4, for the gold medal. The East beat the South, 7-3, for the bronze.

The 6-foot-2, 256-pound Deal threw the hammer 254 feet 9 inches, bettering the festival record of 242-5 by Jud Logan of North Canton, Ohio, in 1985.

The previous best throw this year had been 254-4 by Ken Flax of the New York Athletic Club.

Deal, 28, a member of the 1988 Olympic team, finished third in The Athletics Congress championships this year after having won the title in 1989.

Williams arrived in Minneapolis at 1 p.m. CDT, about 3 1/2 hours before her race. Even so, she finished in 55.57 seconds, breaking the record of 55.63 by LaTanya Sheffield of El Cajon in 1987.

Steely lapped all but two runners on her way to a time of 32:41.14. The festival record was 33:28.21, set last year by Colette Murphy of Indianapolis.

In men’s gymnastics, UCLA junior Chainey Umphrey scored a 9.85 on the horizontal bar--his final event of the night--to edge Bill Roth of Temple for the all-around gold medal.

Umphrey won the gold with 57.50 points, beating Roth’s 57.45. Mark Warburton of Nebraska finished third with 56.80.

The festival’s defending three-meter diving champion, Kent Ferguson of Boca Raton, Fla., took the lead in Thursday night’s preliminary round.

Ferguson had a score of 634.77 for his 11 dives. Pat Jeffery of Madison, N.J., who was third last year, finished second with 621.63, and Mark Bradshaw of Columbus, Ohio., was third.

In the women’s three-meter springboard, Krista Wilson of Laguna Hills, moved past 1988 Olympian Wendy Lucero in the seventh round to win the preliminaries.

Wilson is one of the nation’s hottest three-meter divers, coming off victories in the U.S. championships and NCAA meet.

Lucero, the 1987 and 1989 festival champion from Aurora, Colo., led until the seventh round, when she dove poorly on a back 2 1/2 somersault tuck. Wilson responded with a solid effort on her most difficult dive--a back 1 1/2 somersault, 2 1/2 twist free--and took the lead. She finished with 463.59 points to Lucero’s 453.90.

The top 12 divers advanced to Saturday’s finals.