Trials, Tribulations Plague Recruiters of the Elite Runners : L.A. Marathon: Athletes schedule around Olympics, which keeps them out of many races. Still, a deep field is set for next Sunday’s event.

A tough job gets tougher every four years in the marathon business.

The people who put together elite marathon fields complain every year about competition with other races and the cutthroat pursuit of the best runners. It takes a lot of money and no small amount of strategy to lure the big names.

Then there are the Olympic years.

Every four years, the world’s best runners lay low. Most world-class marathoners run two or three marathons a year. This year, with the Olympic marathon in August, the schedule is even more prohibitive. Top runners will save themselves for their country’s Olympic trials, then the Summer Games.

A spring marathon such as next Sunday’s seventh annual Los Angeles Marathon is hit especially hard because of timing. The best American women ran the Olympic trials marathon earlier this month at Houston. The three Olympians will not run another marathon until Barcelona, and the other top American women probably will not run another marathon for months.

The American men are in a different bind. Their trials are not until April, but for anyone serious about making the Olympic team, running an all-out marathon in March is not recommended.

Fall marathons are caught on both ends. Some runners may compete in the New York Marathon in November, for example, before the Olympics. Some might run again next November after the Olympics. Many won’t. And that makes the job of recruiting elite runners for marathons especially tough this year.

“I think that, even though the Olympic Games are in July, it’s still pretty close to the New York Marathon,” said Fred Lebow, director of the race. “If a runner is going to win the Olympics, they don’t want to run the New York Marathon.”

Mark Plaatjes, a world-class marathoner who puts together the elite field for Los Angeles, understands the problem but says, to his surprise, this year’s race will have its deepest field.

“I don’t know why a lot of people decided to come,” he said. “I didn’t even need to do as much work as I’ve done in the past.”

Part of the reason is the L.A. Marathon is more well-known to top runners. Another reason is that marathoners who plan to run at the Olympics might want a race to tune up, a race in which to experiment and see how they feel. Some may treat it as a training run and drop out at the halfway point.

Because of the change in purse structure--in which emphasis has shifted from performance to paying larger appearance fees--Plaatjes says he has no control over the race once it begins.

“They could do that (take the money, then drop out), sure,” Plaatjes said. “People are looking at it this way: They can run at L.A., then run the trials. If they don’t have a chance of getting a medal at the Olympics, they can run all the races and still make money.”

Plaatjes said he didn’t attempt to recruit any Americans because of the Olympic trials schedule.

“You’d be stupid to even try,” he said.

Lebow said his race has become so big that it doesn’t need elite athletes. But New York is struggling with financial problems and can’t afford the big names it once could.

“We do compete for elite athletes,” he said. “For television, it matters. Unfortunately, we don’t have American names. That would get the crowd interested. Yes, we would like to have them, but we don’t. There are enough marathon runners around, but they are foreigners. The only foreigner they recognize in New York is Grete Waitz.

“I don’t think we are concerned about the Olympics. We don’t expect Olympic gold medalists to run the New York City Marathon in the fall. Anyway, that’s only one to two people, and who knows them?”

The Los Angeles Marathon may not have names familiar to Americans, but the race has preserved its competitiveness by its position as an Olympic trials race for several countries, especially Mexico and its vast pool of running talent.

The fastest and most competitive L.A. Marathon was in 1988, when Mexican runner Martin Mondragon set a course record of 2 hours 10 minutes 19 seconds in a bid to make the Mexican Olympic team. That kind of incentive often makes a race more exciting to spectators and runners alike.

Mondragon is in this year’s race and has been told he will have to break 2:10 to make the Mexican team.

“There’s always a problem in the Olympic year,” Plaatjes said. “But we lucked out. We’ll have a good, competitive race. That’s what we want.”