WORLD SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : While IAAF Fiddles, Reynolds Sits and Burns

Butch Reynolds, the world record-holder in the 400 meters, considered running a leg in an exhibition relay Saturday in Stanford’s Track & Field Festival but decided against it because he feared that it might further complicate his legal battle with the International Amateur Athletic Federation. The last thing this case needs is further complication.

The IAAF, which governs track and field, suspended Reynolds for two years after he tested positive for an anabolic steroid during an Aug. 14, 1988, meet at Nice, France.

Ever since, there have been questions about the reliability of the test, which was conducted in an International Olympic Committee-approved laboratory at Paris.

Reynolds won his case before an independent arbitrator last summer, allowing him to compete in the national championships, and later was exonerated by The Athletics Congress, the national governing body for track and field.

But he still is involved in the international appeals process. U.S. track and field officials, who have become increasingly supportive of Reynolds as he lingers in limbo, have suggested that the IAAF yielded to IOC pressure to delay his hearing before an independent international arbitrator so there would be no further scrutiny of the Paris laboratory before the Winter Olympics.

IOC sources confirm that the medical commission was nervous that the laboratory, which was used for drug testing at the Winter Olympics in France, would be discredited, but they said that they are not aware of any accommodation reached with the IAAF.

In any case, the Winter Olympics have been finished for more than a month, and Reynolds still is not scheduled to appear before the arbitrator until early May, less than two months before the U.S. Olympic trials.

“The IAAF is slimier than a lubricated eel,” Reynolds’ coach, Brooks Johnson, told USA Today last week. “If their case is so ironclad, then hold the hearing. Say ‘Bam, you’re dead until you’re resurrected.’ This is an absolute heinous travesty.”

The IAAF has appealed to the IOC to change the track and field schedule for the Summer Olympics so that it would be possible for the United States’ Michael Johnson to compete in both the 200 and the 400. Barcelona’s organizing committee is resisting because programs have been printed and tickets sold. . . . PattiSue Plumer has a lower back injury that affects the nerves in her legs, but she won the 1,500 meters at Stanford in 4:14.38--61 seconds for the final 400--and finished second in the 800 in 2:04.58. . . . Andre Phillips, the 1988 gold medalist in the intermediate hurdles, is making a comeback after sitting out most of the last two seasons because of a foot injury called plantar fascitis. “It took me three months to pronounce it,” he told the San Francisco Examiner after finishing second in the 200 at Stanford to USC’s Jeff Laynes.

Figure skater Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic gold medalist, is renewing his campaign to regain his eligibility in time to compete in the 1994 Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, Norway, but he is not optimistic.

Boitano and others who have competed in unsanctioned pro competitions are ineligible, but the International Skating Union does not exclude skaters who earn money for exhibitions, tours and endorsements. Agents estimate that Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist and world champion, could earn $1 million this year and still retain her “amateur” status.

In her never-ending quest for more exposure for her sport, Betty Watanabe, the executive director of U.S. Synchronized Swimming, Inc., at Indianapolis, asked for suggestions from television executives. They told her that the women needed to lose the unsightly nose-clips. “One of them told me that it looked on television like they had spinach in their teeth,” Watanabe said.

So she took her problem to Indiana University’s school of dentistry. “Once everyone got done laughing, they realized it wasn’t a laughing matter,” she said. They deferred to their prosthodontics experts, who developed a device that is inserted into the nose and is not noticeable on television.

The new nose-clip might be on display--or not on display--Friday through Sunday at the U.S. Olympic trials for synchronized swimming at the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena.

With the U.S. national soccer team’s success last year, Coach Bora Milutinovic was considered a miracle worker. This year, while the national team struggles, the coach of the under-23 team, Lothar Osiander, is working miracles.

In the first game of the final round of qualifying for this summer’s Olympics, his team beat Mexico, 2-1, last week at Mexico City. It was not a happy night for Mexico’s fans, who threw bottles and other objects onto the field at the end of the game.

Mexico dominated North American soccer for many decades, but now victories for the United States over its neighbor are becoming more common. The national team beat Mexico in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Cup last year at the Coliseum, a loss so humiliating for the Mexican coach that he quit, and the under-23 team won the championship of the Pan American Games with a victory over Mexico.