TRACK AND FIELD / JULIE CART : Plumer’s Fate Parallels Slaney’s

PattiSue Plumer would seem to be poised for the finest season of her career. The former Stanford star led the charge for American female middle-distance runners with her world No. 1 ranking in 1990 at both 5,000 and 3,000 meters.

Her career of late brings to mind Mary Slaney’s dominance in the mid 1980s.

But Plumer’s story bears another similarity to Slaney’s--a hip injury that might end her career.

Few track fans can forget Slaney’s fall during the 3,000-meter final at the 1984 Olympics. Slaney’s plunge into the grassy infield didn’t appear as serious as it turned out to be. However, that injury, coupled with Slaney’s various lower leg problems, has kept her from finishing a complete and injury-free season since.

There is an echo of Slaney in Plumer’s story. Plumer fell at the finish line during last summer’s Prefontaine meet at Eugene, Ore.--Slaney’s home track. She fell hard on her left hip and only later discovered what damage had been done. Plumer limped through the rest of the outdoor season, but knew there was something terribly wrong.

“I took six weeks off and it didn’t change a thing,” she said.

There followed a persistent and increasingly frantic search for a medical answer for the injury, which on some days allows her to run but not accelerate, and on other days prevents Plumer from even a slow jog.

Doctors have failed so far to give Plumer a definitive answer to what ails her. With all the uncertainty, another athletic name comes to mind, that of Bo Jackson.

“I’m trying not to worry about that,” she said. “I’d be happy if it was like two steps forward and one back. But it’s not even that. I’m focusing on the Olympics. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to have every ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’ crossed to make the Olympic team.

“But I want to win an Olympic medal more than anything in the world. I’m frustrated. I’m losing time, and we still don’t know what it is.”

Plumer will run what is for her a sprint, the mile, at the Sunkist Invitational Saturday night at the Sport Arena. The race figures to be competitive with the top three finishers from the 1991 national championships: Suzy Hamilton, Plumer and Cal State Northridge graduate Darcy Arreola.

Katrin Krabbe, the German sprint sensation, was suspended briefly Friday, on the eve of the German national championships. Officials said that the urine tests of Krabbe and two other German female athletes were “suspicious.” The three were allowed to compete Saturday and on Sunday officials announced that the matter would be further investigated.

Officials said the women’s tests appeared to have come from the same person. The tests were conducted last month while the three were training in South Africa. All are former East German athletes; the unified German sports machine is still trying dig out from the drug scandals and revelations of widespread doping among East German athletes.

It remains to be seen what will become of Krabbe, the world champion at 100 and 200 meters. Track officials were delighted with Krabbe’s commercial success, hoping it would be a harbinger of endorsement opportunities for all the former communist athletes.

But there is another question that remains to be answered: Will there be separate sanctions applied to the athletes for training in still a banned country for track and field athletes?

Little noted but impressive nonetheless was the accomplishment of high jumper Rick Noji at an all-comers meet last week. Noji, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall, cleared a bar set at 7-7. That came close to equaling the world record for high jumping over your head.

That record is still held by Franklin Jacobs, also 5-8, who jumped 7-7 1/4.

Had Noji, who is from Seattle, had a better grasp of the metric system, he might have gotten the record. Noji was aware that he was close to the record and asked the bar be raised to the metric height of 2.31, which he believed to be 7-7 1/4. The record height is 2.32.