WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Festival Events Collide With New York Games

In a bit of unfortunate scheduling sanctioned by The Athletics Congress, the New York Games at Columbia University are planned for July 20, the third day of track and field competition in the U.S. Olympic Festival at UCLA’s Drake Stadium.

With so few quality meets in the United States, allowing two to take place on the same day in the nation’s two largest markets seems illogical. In defense of TAC, which governs the sport in this country, that is the only weekend athletes have free from the crowded--and lucrative--European season.

Athletes on the U.S. team for this summer’s World Championships who tentatively have decided to compete in the festival include high hurdler Greg Foster, long jumpers Mike Powell and Cindy Greiner, decathlete Dave Johnson, quarter-milers Quincy Watts and Jeff Reynolds, intermediate hurdler Kevin Young and sprinter Michelle Finn.

Only eight winners from the recent U.S. Track and Field Championships chose to enter the Aug. 2-18 Pan American Games in Havana. But at least the men’s high jump competition will be world class. American record-holder Hollis Conway, silver medalist in the 1988 Olympic Games, will meet Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor, the only high jumper to clear 8 feet. They also are expected to meet in the New York Games.

One of the most anticipated confrontations in the festival was supposed to occur in the women’s match sprint cycling race between Connie Paraskevin-Young and Renee Duprel, who finished 1-2 in last year’s World Championships.

But because they probably will meet in the National Championships next Tuesday through July 14 in Redmond, Wash., another rematch only a few days later at the Cal State Dominguez Hills velodrome seemed redundant to Paraskevin-Young, who decided not to enter. Duprel still plans to compete.

When last we left U.S. figure skating champion Tonya Harding, she had quit her coach, Dody Teachmann, and said she was going to coach herself with the aid of a video camera operated by her husband. Latest word from her hometown, Portland, Ore., is that Harding has returned to Teachmann and her marriage is breaking up.

Like former U.S. men’s champion Christopher Bowman, Harding is the real deal. But some of the more uptight folks from the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. are not amused with her nonconformity.

Recent news that heavy-duty reconstruction at the Coliseum might not begin until after the 1992 NFL season could eliminate that stadium from consideration as one of soccer’s World Cup sites in 1994.

“Unless they’ve got a contractor who can guarantee completion in time for us, I’m not sure we’ll be able to consider them,” said Chuck Cale, co-chairman of the organizing committee. “So that we can make a decision, the issue for us right now is, ‘Are they in or are they out?’ ”

The Rose Bowl always has been considered a more likely site, anyway.

Cale said the National League’s decision to bring major league baseball to Denver and Miami also might affect those cities’ plans to play host to World Cup games.

The draw for 1994 World Cup qualifying has been scheduled for New York’s Madison Square Garden on Dec. 8. About 120 countries are expected to enter the qualifying rounds, which begin next year. Only 22 teams will emerge to play in the World Cup along with defending champion Germany and the host United States.

Two 1990 World Cup veterans returning from Europe, midfielders Tab Ramos and John Harkes, were expected to be with the U.S. team for the CONCACAF Gold Cup this week at the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum. But Ramos decided to use his brief break between seasons in the Spanish second division to get married, and Harkes, whose Sheffield Wednesday team earned promotion into England’s first division, is injured.

Haiti returned home angry from its Olympic qualifying game at Colorado Springs, Colo., against the United States. Not only did the Haitians lose, 8-0, their goalkeeper suffered a compound fracture of his leg and had to wait almost half an hour for an ambulance. They complained that they were treated “like animals.”

But the Haitians can’t escape blame. Against a doctor’s advice, they wanted to take the goalkeeper home for surgery because they hadn’t provided insurance for their players. The U.S. Soccer Federation contacted the sports international governing body (FIFA), which agreed to pay to have the goalkeeper’s broken bones set in Colorado Springs.

UCLA’s Chris Henderson is seeing double-duty. He starts for the U.S. Olympic soccer team, which consists of players under 23, and the national team.

World Sports Notes

In a “Soccer America” survey of its readers to compile the sport’s top 20 heroes, Pele finished first and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer second. The highest-ranked Americans were midfielder Paul Caligiuri ninth and goalkeeper Tony Meola 10th. . . . South Africa’s Interim National Olympic Committee has agreed to allow sports to return to international competition individually as they desegregate. The South African Council of Sport wanted to maintain the ban on South African sports until all were integrated. . . . Durban, South Africa, is campaigning to organize the 2000 Summer Olympics. South Africa has not yet been readmitted to the Olympic movement, but that could happen as soon as next Tuesday at a meeting between officials from that country and the International Olympic Committee.

Despite civil war in Yugoslavia, that country’s basketball team didn’t suffer much disharmony in winning the European championship last week at Rome. The nucleus of the team is Croatian, although one key player is Serbian, center Vlade Divac. . . . Jari Kurri had planned to play for Finland in the 1992 Winter Olympics until he signed with the Kings, who probably will not allow players to take three weeks off in February to play in the Olympics.