WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Comeback Has Some Doubting Thomas, Few Doing Cartwheels

Instead of embracing him for attracting attention to the sport, as the swimmers have Mark Spitz, some gymnasts hope Kurt Thomas falls on his Tsukahara.

Thomas is perhaps the best male gymnast the United States has ever produced, but he was denied a chance to compete in the 1980 Summer Olympics because of the boycott. Now, at 35, he is attempting a comeback. On May 18-19, he will compete in a regional qualifying meet at Madison, Wis., in an effort to earn a berth in the national championships at Cincinnati June 7-9.

“To be honest with you, I think the comeback is a ploy to make money,” gymnast Trent Dimas said in an interview with Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine.

Another gymnast, Mike Racanelli, added: “When he announced, it was in typical Kurt fashion, which was really tacky. Basically, he said he was going to teach us a lesson and basically screw us.”

Coming to Thomas’ defense was his coach, Lee Battaglia, but even he acknowledged, “There were guys calling Kurt the ‘Milli Vanilli’ of gymnastics.”

GQ’s reporter concluded that Thomas is “not exactly Mr. Nice Guy. In the chipper, white-bread world of men’s gymnastics, Thomas is dark with rye seeds--the kind that stick in your teeth.”

While on the subject of comebacks, isn’t it time Spitz gave it a rest?

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, his two 50-meter butterfly races at Mission Viejo were honorable attempts to see whether he could compete at the world-class level at age 41. But he should have been humiliated by his performance in the 100-meter butterfly last Thursday in the Canary Islands.

Fifth in a field of five, he finished almost four seconds behind the winner. His time of 58.77 seconds not only did not come close to the U.S. Olympic trials qualifying standard of 55.59, it was slower than the national record of 58.74. We’re talking about the national age group record for 11- and 12-year-old boys.

Considering the difficulty Los Angeles had in finding sponsors to pay for this summer’s U.S. Olympic Festival, many people were surprised to learn the city is bidding for the 1998 Goodwill Games.

One of them was David Simon, president of the L.A. Sports Council, which, according to Goodwill Games officials, is behind the bid.

“I did a double take,” Simon said of his reaction when he saw the press release listing Los Angeles along with 17 other candidates.

Simon said the Sports Council expressed interest in reviewing the bid requirements but made no other commitment.

Having said that, he added he has no ill will toward Goodwill. He said the Sports Council probably will be represented in a meeting at Atlanta on June 5 between potential host cities and Goodwill Games officials.

Definitely represented will be an Orange County-Long Beach group headed by Irvine’s Richard Foster, president of the U.S. Water Polo federation.

“We’re going to get it,” Foster said.

Tonya Harding of Portland, Ore., improved from seventh place in 1990 to first one year later in the national figure skating championships, became the first U.S. woman to perform a triple axel and finished second in the world championships.

So what does she do next?

Fires her coach, of course.

“Things didn’t work out financially,” she said of her split with Dody Teachmann. Harding said she will coach herself with the aid of a video camera, although her former coach of 14 years, Diane Rawlinson, will assist her with jumps and choreography.

Harding may get to test her self-coaching at the July 12-21 Olympic Festival. She declined an invitation last week, but U.S. Figure Skating Assn. officials are pressuring her to change her mind.

The NFL demonstrated the seriousness of its war on anabolic steroids when Randy Barnes was signed to a two-year contract by the San Francisco 49ers. Barnes, the world record-holder in the shotput, is serving a two-year suspension from track and field after testing positive for a steroid.

Rotterdam’s mayor, Bram Peper, said he will cancel Wednesday’s European Cup Winners championship game between England’s Manchester United and Barcelona if there is danger of crowd violence. This is the first year English teams have been allowed to compete in the European cups since the Heysel Stadium disaster in Brussels in 1985, when 39 spectators were killed in rioting instigated by Liverpool fans.

English soccer officials contend their hooligan problem is confined to club teams, but tell that to the Turkish police. Unruly fans of England’s national team rampaged through the streets of Kusadasi, a resort city on the Aegean Sea, smashing windows of parked cars and trying to burn Turkish flags the day before England’s 1-0 victory over Turkey earlier this month in a European Championship qualifying game. Forty-one were arrested. . . . Are U.S. organizers of the 1994 World Cup really prepared for this sort of thing?

Give World Cup USA 1994 officials credit, though, for coaxing the international soccer federation (FIFA) into the 20th Century. On a recent visit to FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, Chuck Cale, the organizing committee’s chief executive, and Alan Rothenberg, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, persuaded officials to require players in the 1994 World Cup to wear names on the back of their jerseys and numbers on the front. FIFA called it a “gesture of good will for the spectators and media reporters.”

A decision was deferred on another U.S. request to replay the championship game if it ends in a draw instead of settling it by penalty kicks.

When AC Milan, the 1989 and 1990 world club champion, plays in Los Angeles on June 19, it probably will be without Dutch master Ruud Gullit. He had arthroscopic surgery on his oft-injured right knee Monday and is expected to miss the final three weeks of the Italian season, the Netherlands’ June 5 European Championship qualifying game against Finland and AC Milan’s two-game U.S. tour, which begins June 16 with a game against the United States in Chicago. The opponent in Los Angeles is Palmeiras of Brazil.

Notes

The U.S. State Department, which has a policy that prevents citizens from traveling to Cuba as tourists, will make an exception for parents and spouses of athletes competing in the Pan American Games, Aug. 2-18, in Havana and Santiago. . . . U.S. men open play in the World Volleyball League’s second season Friday night at UC Irvine’s Bren Center against Japan. Those teams will play again Saturday night at San Diego’s Sports Arena. . . . Winners at last weekend’s national wrestling championships in Las Vegas automatically receive byes into the final round of next year’s Olympic trials.

The International Olympic Committee’s program commission recommended that women’s modern pentathlon be admitted as an official sport for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, but the executive board decided to study it further. . . . The United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Canada are in the field for soccer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup, June 28-July 7, at the Coliseum and Rose Bowl. Favored to win the other four berths are Guatemala, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, and Cuba.

The deadline for volunteering to work at the Olympic Festival has been extended to May 31. About 10,000 volunteers are needed. . . . The 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which also will serve as the trials for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, have been awarded to Detroit. . . . Romania’s rugby team landed Friday in New Zealand for the start of a tour, but its luggage landed in Los Angeles. A menswear company in Auckland donated underwear and gear bags to the team.

Kurt Thomas