WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Athletes Pass the Tests, Fail in Record Bids

There was much discussion last weekend at track and field’s USA/Mobil Outdoor Championships about the sparseness of world records since the 1988 Summer Olympics and whether it is coincidence that random, short-notice drug testing has been instituted during the last two years in several countries, including the United States.

Hurdler Edwin Moses thinks not.

“Times are up; bodies are thinner,” he said.

Whether the bodies are thinner is not so easy to research, but there is no question that times are up and throws are down in all but a few events. In the two years after the 1980 Moscow Olympics, there were 20 world records broken and another equaled. In the two years after the 1984 L.A. Olympics, 26 world records were broken and two equaled. In the two years after the Seoul Olympics, only nine world records were broken.

“There’s no question that there’s been a decrease in drug use in our sport,” said Ollan Cassell, executive director of The Athletics Congress, the U.S. governing body for track and field. “I think most of it is because of the increased testing going on around the world.”

Other factors in the declining performances include the virtual elimination of government support for sports in former Eastern Bloc countries.

“Those athletes in the past had nothing to do but prepare for training and competitions,” former high jumper Dwight Stones said. “Now, they have go out and make a living, find apartments and do other things they’ve never had to do before. Even the most mundane things, like getting the phone turned on in an apartment, they’ve had to learn how to do.”

But even that topic eventually returned to drugs.

“Those countries are broke,” middle-distance runner PattiSue Plumer said. “They’re not going to spend millions of dollars on developing drugs for their athletes when people are starving.”

Plumer, an environmentalist, also has another theory about the infrequency of world records. She said the global warming trend is not conducive to fast times in any distance longer than 200 meters.

Despite the advantages of drug testing, International Amateur Athletic Federation and TAC officials should be concerned that they do not trample on athletes’ rights.

Both groups seem eager to see Butch Reynolds, the world record-holder in the 400, serve a two-year suspension after testing positive for an anabolic steroid last August, even though an independent laboratory analyst claims that the two urine samples used as evidence against him came from different people.

The strain of attempting to prove his innocence through the court system has taken an emotional toll on Reynolds.

“There were times when I wanted to quit; there were times when I wanted to kill myself,” he said last week. “I had to go for spiritual help. I’m the kind of guy who can do things for himself. I never thought I needed that sort of help before, but I can’t do this alone.”

One problem with track and field in the United States is that there are too few meets when virtually all of the country’s outstanding performers compete. It only happens when TAC is selecting a team for the World Championships, as it was at last week’s national championships, or the Olympics.

Perhaps it will help, Cassell said, if the IAAF decides in August to hold the World Championships every two years instead of four. That will provide at least one more meaningful meet for the United States every quadrennium.

As good as the national championships were last week at Downing Stadium on Randalls Island, the four-day attendance was only 23,648. The organizers couldn’t give away tickets, although they tried. They handed out 10,000 tickets per day to schoolchildren.

Comeback of the meet honors went to Tracy Sundlun, president of the Metropolitan Athletics Congress. As the chief organizer, he took the heat when the meet got off to a miserable start. But after the first day, there were only the routine gripes. Routine for New York, of course, includes complaints from athletes whoses buses to the stadium Saturday were stuck for more than an hour behind a parade in Harlem.

Random thoughts:

--Dave Johnson, who was the nation’s leading decathlete until Dan O’Brien won the national championship, says he needs at least one more competition before the Aug. 24-Sept. 2 World Championships. He has chosen the July 12-21 U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles. Before he found religion, Johnson, who lives in Pomona, was a juvenile delinquent in Montana.

O’Brien, who lives in Moscow, Ida., also was a wild child. Son of a black father and white mother, he was raised by a family in Oregon that included adopted Korean and American Indian children.

--Moses missed the national championships to train for next month’s dry-land push trials in Lake Placid, N.Y., for the U.S. bobsled team at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.

--Location, location, location. That’s the reason Nagano, Japan, won the International Olympic Committee vote over Salt Lake City as host for the 1998 Winter Games. Although the IOC’s site-evaluation team did not find one negative to report regarding Salt Lake City, a majority of members did not want to vote for another U.S. city only nine months after awarding the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta. The Winter Games were last held in Asia at Sapporo, Japan, in 1972.

--Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, was re-instated as head of Iraq’s Olympic Committee. He was temporarily ousted after being accused of killing his bodyguard. When he attends soccer games, fans are subjected to as many as five body searches by security guards.

--Jack Kelly, who is running the Goodwill Games, said the proposed change of Leningrad’s name to St. Petersburg could cost Ted Turner $100,000. That’s the cost to update obsolete stationary, souvenirs and other paraphernalia that is stamped with Leningrad, host of the 1994 Goodwill Games.