GOODWILL GAMES : ROUNDUP : Mora Is Unwanted, but Wins Marathon

Dave Mora wasn’t considered good enough to wear the uniform of the United States team in the Goodwill Games marathon.

But when the race was run Saturday in Seattle, there was nobody better than Mora.

Mora, an added entry, burst into the lead with about four miles to go and won in 2 hours 14 minutes 49 seconds.

A 26-year-old from Bloomington, Ind., who did not wear a U.S. uniform because he was the fourth U.S. selection, passed tiring leader Thomas Robert Naali of Tanzania and defeated Soviet Nikolai Tabak by almost two minutes in his best-ever time.

“I saw (Naali) slowing down for a long time and I thought that if I would pace it, he would come to me,” Mora said. “That’s the way it worked.

“And when I caught him, I threw a little surge--and that was it.”

Tabak clocked 2:16:27 for second place and Canadian Peter Maher finished third in 2:17:15.

Naali, a 21-year-old prison guard running his first marathon, led the entire race until Mora passed him on a flat portion of the often-hilly course through the streets along Lake Washington, Lake Union and Elliott Bay. Naali finished ninth.

“I’m not too big a mileage runner,” said Mora, who trained primarily for the 10,000 meters before this.

Mora originally was left off because of a misunderstanding, then allowed to compete as an “invited guest” by The Athletics Congress.

“I knew I would beat all the other Americans on the team,” Mora said. “I had that feeling because I had been running very well. . . . I would have liked to have worn the U.S. uniform, but I’m still an American.”

Soviet gymnasts Vitali Scherbo and Valeri Belenki took the gold and silver medals in the men’s all-around competition at Tacoma, while American Lance Ringnald won the bronze.

The Soviets dominated the competition, scoring highest in five of six events and tying in the remaining event, the high bar.

Scherbo won the gold with a score of 59.20 points, and Belenki scored 58.65.

Ringnald had 58.20 to take the bronze ahead of teammate Chris Waller, who had 57.80, in the best U.S. finish in the all-around event in major international competition since Peter Vidmar’s silver medal at the 1984 Olympics.

The 18-year-old Scherbo, who placed fifth in the 1990 European championships in the all-around event, scored a competition high 9.95 on the vault. His lowest score was a 9.75 on the parallel bars.

While the Soviets easily won the gold and silver, it was a three-way battle for the bronze among Ringnald, Waller and Sylvio Kroll of East Germany, who ended up tied for sixth with China’s Guo Linyao at 57.50.

The Soviet Union won four gold medals and East Germany took two in the first day of rowing.

The top Americans were Kris Karlson of Keene, Conn.; Alison Townley of Minneapolis, who finished second in the women’s open double sculls; Rob Shepherd of Lafayette, Calif.; Christian Sahs of Southborough, Mass.; Jeff McLaughlin, Warwick, R.I., and Patrick Manning of Hyde Park, N.Y., who were fourth in the men’s fours with coxswain.

Soviet winners were Girt Vilks and Valeri Dosenko in the men’s open double sculls, Vladimir Romanishin, Igor Bortnitski, Sigitas Kuchinskis and Petr Petrinich in the open fours with coxswain, Tatyana Borisova and Liliya Aleshkina in the women’s lightweight pairs without coxswain, and Sariya Zakirova and Svetlana Mazi in the open double sculls.

East Germany’s Uwe Kellner, Thomas Jung, Frank Pawloski, Andreas Hache took the open fours without coxswain, and the East German women’s eight of Birhte Siech, Heike Winkler, Annegret Strauch, Janette Barth, Antje Frank, Una Justh, Kathrin Haacker, Judith Zeidler and Daniela Neunast also won.

Other winners were Vaclav Chalupa of Czechoslovakia in the men’s open single sculls and Mette Block Jensen of Denmark in the women’s lightweight single sculls.