He Saw What Was Coming, but It Wasn’t His Time to Go

Paul Newman crashed his Lotus Esprit Turbo in Saturday’s SCCA World Challenge race at Lime Rock Park, near his home in Westport, Conn., and the 67-year-old actor may have had a premonition of what happened.

After qualifying on the pole Friday, Newman said: “I’m not worried about winning the race, I’m worried about having a pulse after the race.”

The next day, Newman spun in the dirt, slid around and smacked a tire barrier with the rear end of his car. The car was injured, but Newman wasn’t.

Now he knows: When Jack Nicklaus was young, he could hit a golf ball farther and straighter off the tee than anyone. He didn’t know what it was like to be in the rough. Especially short in the rough. Things have changed.

“It’s no fun to play when you know you can’t drive it in a 10-acre field,” he said after missing the cut in the British Open.

No kidding.

End of the line? Mike Gostigian, the United States’ leading gold-medal hope in the modern pentathlon, told Mike Preston of the Baltimore Sun that his sport--combining fencing, swimming, shooting, running and horseback riding--might be on its last legs.

“This may not be an Olympic sport for long, going the way of the Edsel. People won’t appreciate it till it’s gone,” Gostigian said.

Gostigian also said: “This might sound silly, but once a week I usually run up the (Philadelphia) Art Museum steps, like Rocky. It pumps me up.”

Trivia time: Who is the only Olympic decathlon champion to also win an individual event in the same Olympics?

Changing fortunes: Only two years ago, Dana Kiecker was the Boston Red Sox rookie of the year, a starting pitcher in the American League playoffs. Where is he now? After a bone spur dropped him out of the major leagues, he pitches for the Dundas Dukes in the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Assn. He recently struck out five and gave up only two hits as Dundas beat Cannon Falls, 11-0, for his first victory in any league in more than a year.

Active athletes: Organizers have stocked 50,000 packages of condoms at the Olympic village. Tom FitzGerald of the San Francisco Chronicle figures that averages out at “roughly one per day” for every athlete there.

Trivia answer: Harold Osborn, who won the high jump at 6 feet 6 inches five days before winning the decathlon in 1924 at Paris.

Not to worry: Erik Howard, the New York Giants’ veteran nose tackle, is holding out for the third consecutive year, but his teammates aren’t concerned.

“What time is our first game against the (San Francisco) 49ers? 4 p.m.?” asked one Giant old-timer. “Erik could probably show up at 1 p.m., stretch a little and he’d start.”

In the limelight: U.S. swimmer Tom Jager, a gold-medal favorite in Barcelona, has no illusions about the amount of fame he might generate.

“About as much as your average utility infielder,” he predicted.

Mind game: When comedian Elayne Boosler sang the national anthem before a recent baseball game, she told the Seattle Times about having second thoughts: “It was weird. I had to stand with my back to the crowd, because the flag was in center field. My butt was facing the players. I thought to myself, ‘I should have jogged more.’ ”

Tell it like it is: Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated: “Sports is run by clowns and nincompoops and lawyers who are so crooked they could stand in the shadow of a corkscrew.”

Quotebook: Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic decathlon champion: “The decathlon is like life: You’ve got more than one thing to do, and some of the things you might not do as well as others, and you have to work on that.”