Winter Sports Fixture Is Dying a Slow Death : Indoor track: As its popularity grows in Europe, drug scandals and a lack of money combine to hurt the product in the U.S.

Asked recently if he thought indoor track in the United States might be in trouble or even possibly dying, middle-distance star John Walker responded quickly:

“Dying?” he said, laughing. “It’s bloody dead. Cold dead.”

Harsh, perhaps, but close to the truth. For whatever reasons--and those in the sport don’t seem to agree on them--indoor track and field has become a flickering flame in imminent danger of being snuffed out.

“We have seen a lessening of enthusiasm in the last few years around the country, the crowds have dropped off,” said Howard Schmertz, director of New York’s Millrose Games, after 83 years still the most prestigious indoor meet in the world.

If the Millrose Games are having problems, and they are, and not merely with smaller crowds but with a serious financial squeeze, then what is the future for the other, smaller meets? What has happened to a sport that used to draw thousands of enthusiastic fans and was once a fixture on the winter sports scene?

As usual, there are as many opinions as there are people in the sport. Still, a few main issues emerge. Most are the familiar villains cited by other sports and many are convenient, almost universal scapegoats.

THE ECONOMY AND LACK OF SPONSORS

The Times meet folded because it lost sponsors. The Grand Prix meet in Portland, Ore., has no sponsor. The Millrose Games have no sponsor.

Schmertz of the Millrose Games said he can survive without a sponsor, but not for long.

“It’s difficult to find the money in this day and age,” he said. “This is when American meets started to suffer, when appearance fees started to be significant. There are very few athletes (now) who don’t run for a living. It’s a business for all concerned--but it’s a losing business for the track meets.”

It didn’t used to be. Cecil Smith, director for the Hamilton Spectator Games, said that although sponsors used to want track meets, they are now shopping around.

“Because of the soft corporate environment, corporations are looking elsewhere for a bang for their buck,” Smith said. “Sometimes tiddlywinks has a higher bang for a buck than track and field.”

Tom Jordan, meet director in Portland, says the problem is not the economy. “These problems were around long before the economy went bad,” he said.

The biggest concern, however, seems to be the defection of the corporate world.

“Some sponsors are staying with us, others have dropped off,” Smith said. “Because of the softening economy, they tell us they can’t support a track meet when they are laying off people. That makes corporate sense to me. I wouldn’t do it, either.

“I’d like to think the sport would be able to ride it out. But I don’t know.”

THE MEDIA

Here is the most familiar culprit.

“I blame some of it on the media,” Schmertz said. “You are lucky if you can get some space in the paper the day of the meet. Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, every single paper in New York had a track writer, and there were seven or eight papers.

“I don’t think the media today is very well informed about track. There is no interest created by the media. Maybe the editors don’t think there is any interest among the readers.”

A strong argument could be made that there isn’t a broad base of interest in all of track and field--and the base is more narrow still for the indoor version.

The best crowds in Los Angeles for indoor track used to be at the Sunkist meet. But meet director Al Franken said that the last sellout the Sunkist meet had was in 1985. And Franken acknowledges that the 1984 Olympic afterglow might have accounted for that.

GREEDY ATHLETES AND AGENTS

“I can remember the L.A. Times meet in 1975,” Jordan said. “You had John Walker and all the top milers in the world on the starting line. You can’t get that kind of a field today. Not even close. No one could afford it.

“It used to be that you could get the big-time athletes and it would sell every ticket and with that you could afford to get other athletes. Not now. Ben Johnson is so far off the scale that it would be impossible to put together a meet after you paid him.”

But John Nubani, the agent for hurdler Roger Kingdom, one of track’s highest-paid stars, sees it another way.

“We, I guess, are the fall guys in the promoters’ eyes,” he said. “But I turn it around and say to the promoter that he had the event for years and didn’t do what was needed, didn’t sell the event. Are the promoters really tapping the sponsorship wells?”

BEN JOHNSON

The Canadian sprinter who lost his world record and gold medal because of drugs has been blamed for a host of the sport’s ills. Because of the international publicity Johnson’s Olympic steroid scandal generated, he has become a useful scapegoat for indoor track’s decay.

Now that Johnson has served his two-year suspension and is ready to run indoors, he is creating even more of a stir. He is asking for big bucks in appearance fees, and getting them. Franken is paying Johnson $30,000 to run the 50 meters in his meet.

“That did a total disservice to the sport--globally, and definitely hemispherically between the U.S. and Canada,” Smith said. “I don’t know why Mr. Franken would do that. You’ve sent the wrong signal to other athletes who consider themselves to be the equal, if not the superior, of Ben Johnson. You pay $30,000 for infamy. Ben is not even world-ranked. This will come back to haunt Mr. Franken. Al’s $30,000 may be the kiss of death.”

Franken calls his landing of Johnson “one of the better moves I’ve ever made.”

Indeed. There is no lack of media interest in Franken’s meet. He has had to take out two sections of seats at the Sports Arena to accommodate the media.

DRUGS

First of all, no one in the sport wants to talk about drugs. Except, of course, Al Franken.

“It’s ridiculous,” Franken said. “We are shooting ourselves in the foot with the way the sport publicizes the drug busts.”

Franken says the sport’s officials have been over-zealous in enforcing its strict drug rules.

Cecil Smith in Hamilton thinks the taint of drugs might be scaring away some fans and some sponsors.

“There are elements of that,” he said. “It would be naive to say that it has no impact. (But) those same corporations who are leaving track are also supporting drug-known sports such as football.”

EUROPE

A few years ago, all of a sudden, there was a European indoor circuit. Not only did it appear in one piece, but it was vigorous and well run and it was luring American athletes with fists full of dollars.

“There is simply no way to compete with the appearence fees athletes can get in European meets,” Smith said.

As with the outdoor tour in the late summer, the European indoor meets have little trouble drawing huge crowds. In most European countries, track and field is second only to soccer in popularity as a spectator sport.

Elite athletes can expect to receive up to three times as much money as they could get in the United States. Small wonder, then, that fewer and fewer American athletes compete domestically.

“Yes, the sport is more popular in Europe,” Nubani said. “But it’s also promoted. They went into it three or four years ago. They saw a market. They built big, wonderful 200-meter tracks, which are much better for the runners. There may be one or two 200-meter tracks in the entire United States.”

New tracks cost from $60,000 to $100,000. Most U.S. tracks are old-fashioned--and dangerous--board tracks that are used once a year, then stored.

“There are a lot of tracks in storage in this country,” Jordan said. “And they may never come out.”

NOW WHAT?

While few agree on the whys of indoor track’s problems, most in the sport agree that there is a problem, which is a first step.

When meets fold, such as The Times meet did Friday, even competitors mourn the loss.

“That will send vibrations throughout the indoor world,” Smith said. “I would not say it’s a flagship meet, we look to the Millrose Games as that, but it’s certainly one of the major engines for the boat. You lose one of the engines and you will slow down.”

Some blame the slowdown on The Athletics Congress for its lack of marketing savvy.

“It just needs a major infusion of money,” Franken said. “All the sports that succeed in this country are marketed nationally. TAC just hasn’t done that at all.”

But TAC is making moves to market the sport. TAC is considering selling sign space in arenas as a way to increase revenue.

And Rich Perelman, an L.A. consultant, has proposed a well-organized tour system for track and field that was well received at the recent TAC convention.

His idea, however, even if it is adopted, might be years away from implementation.

So even if it is a good idea, it doesn’t help now.

Is indoor track dead?

“Don’t ask me,” Schmertz said. “My crystal ball is cloudy.”