ROUNDUP : Williams Adds a New Twist, Earns First Place

Wendy Lian Williams of Laguna Beach labeled her experiment with a new kickout a success after easily finishing first Friday in the U.S. Olympic Festival women’s platform diving preliminaries.

The 447.69 points were a personal preliminary best for Williams, a 1988 Olympic bronze medalist.

Williams’ closest pursuer Friday was Cokey Smith of Ann Arbor, Mich., the only competitor whose eight-dive total (381.15) exceeded Williams’ score after seven dives (372.93).

“It seems so silly and I’m not sure that anyone would really notice, just a change in the kickout on my two spinning dives,” Williams said.

“It seems like no big deal, but when you’re moving 35 miles an hour and you’re 10 meters off the water, when you’ve been doing it the same way and you’re real comfortable with it, you don’t want to make any major change like that.

“It was only the fourth or fifth time I had done it that way and both dives went well, so I was really happy.”

Williams’ new move is a more deliberate, three-stage method of kicking her legs away from her body while preparing for a twist.

“I did it because I think it has a little more flair or excitement to it, a little more energy,” she said.

One of the most interesting moments of the preliminaries involved Dallas high schooler Cheril Santini, who incorrectly filled out her pre-dive sign-up sheet.

She was faced with the choice of either trying a back 2 1/2 somersault from the tuck position--which she had never previously attempted--or taking zero points and possibly finishing out of the top 12.

She not only did the dive, but she scored well enough to finish eighth and advance to the finals.

In the men’s 10-meter, defending champion Matt Scoggin of Austin, Tex., used a near-perfect dive in the late going to easily win the preliminaries.

Scoggin finished with a score 628.86. He was awarded three 10s and four 9.5s for an inward 3 1/2 somersault in the tuck position, his second-to-last dive of the night.

The track and field competition slowed to a walk Friday at the U.S. Olympic Festival. Debbi Lawrence of Kenosha, Wis., broke her American record in the 10-kilometer race walk, and two-time Olympian Carl Schueler won a 20-kilometer event that wound up being shorter than planned.

Lawrence finished her race in 46 minutes 10.26 seconds, breaking the American record of 46:14.4 she set in The Athletics Congress meet June 15. She also broke the Festival record of 47:54.0 by Maryanne Torrellas of Clinton, Conn., in 1987.

Lawrence, 28, got an assist from the crowd, which gave her a standing ovation throughout her last lap. She covered the final 400 meters in 1:45 after going at a 1:51 pace for most of the race.

Schueler knew early on that something was amiss in the 20-kilometer race.

“I’ve been racing for 12 years, so when we came through the first lap at the 2 1/2-kilometer mark, I saw the clock and knew the course was short,” Schueler said. “When six guys are on world-record pace at 2 1/2 kilometers, you know something is not right.”

The course was inadvertently laid out to cover 18.230 kilometers. Schueler, of Colorado Springs, Colo., won the race in 1 hour 18 minutes 59 seconds.

Phil Henson, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s commissioner of athletics, said turnaround cones for the race were mistakenly placed at the wrong marker of what was supposed to be a 2 1/2-kilometer loop. The error shortened the loop by about 200 meters.

“After it was discovered, they considered extending it another lap,” Henson said. “But the referee felt that would be too confusing to the athletes.”

National champion Meredith Rainey of New York won the 800 meters in 2:03.40, overtaking silver medalist Celeste Halliday of Bloomfield, Conn., in the final 50 meters.

Rainey won the TAC title earlier this year and will compete in the Goodwill Games later this month.