Ashford, 34, Anchors Winning Relay Team

Fifteen years after she competed in her first Summer Olympics, Evelyn Ashford was asked Sunday if sprinting is still fun for her.

“I’m doing it just to see if I can,” she said. “It’s just a curiosity.”

Pause.

“What was the question?” she asked. “Oh, is it still fun? Yeah, it’s still fun.

“I had to think about it.”

One of the first events on the final day of the Mt. SAC Relays definitely was fun for Ashford, who lives near the track in Walnut. A two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 400-meter relay, she anchored a team in that event to a victory in 43.57 seconds.

As for her appearance three hours later on the second leg of the last-place 1,600-meter relay team, that was more like torture. Sprinters usually take to the quarter-mile like politicians take to lie-detector tests.

“Me running a 400, that proves I’m serious,” she said with a laugh.

After Ashford won a gold medal in the sprint relay and a bronze medal in the 100 meters in the 1988 Summer Olympics at age 31, other sprinters figured she finally would retire. Instead, she returned to be ranked fifth in the world and third in the United States in each of the last two years.

Ashford, 34, is back this year in an attempt to earn berths on the U.S. team for this summer’s World Championships in Tokyo in the 100, 200 and sprint relay.

“The other women see me as very old because I’ve been around for a long time,” she said. “They say, ‘If Evelyn can do it, I know I can because she’s an old lady.”’

One thing they might not do that Ashford did is set a world record in the 100. She did it twice, the last time at 10.76 in 1984, but Florence Griffith Joyner left that one behind four years later with a 10.49.

“The 100 is basically dead,” she said. “If you run a 10. 7, no one pays attention because it’s not a 10.4. That record won’t be broken for a lot of years, if ever.”