Sprint Career Running Out Slowly : Track and Field: Evelyn Ashford, a four-time Olympian, finished eighth in her last U.S. race. She’ll race once more, Aug. 1 in Sapporo, Japan.

Babe Ruth struck out in his last at-bat, and Roger Staubach’s last pass was caught by an offensive lineman. So it is not without precedent that a superior athlete’s career comes to an ignoble conclusion.

“I don’t even know what place or time I had,” Evelyn Ashford said this week of her performance in the 100 meters in last Friday night’s Mazda/Indy Games at Indianapolis.

According to official results, she finished eighth in 11.57 seconds in a race that she had announced would be her last in the United States.

She will run once more, in the 100 on Aug. 1 at Sapporo, Japan.

“I knew all along that this was going to be my last year, but I thought I would be able to get through the whole season,” said Ashford, 36, of Walnut, Calif.

“The old fire just wasn’t there. I always said I would run until I couldn’t do it any more. I did that.”

Recalling highlights of her career, she concentrated on the summer of 1984, when she competed in the second of her four Olympics--her first was as a UCLA freshman in 1976--and won gold medals in the 100 meters and 400-meter relay.

Her victory in the 100 was dismissed by some because of the absence of the boycotting Eastern Bloc athletes, East Germany’s Marlies Gohr in particular. But less than two weeks later, Ashford beat Gohr in a race at Zurich, Switzerland, improving her own world record to 10.76.

That remains the fifth-fastest time run by a woman, the fastest by any other than Florence Griffith Joyner.

In 1988, Ashford finished second in the Olympic 100 to Griffith Joyner and anchored the U.S. 400-meter relay team to a gold medal. Four years later, she ran for the winning sprint-relay team in the Olympics for the third consecutive time.

Thirteen times she was ranked among the world’s top 10 in the 100 by Track & Field News, which selected her as the No. 3 women’s performer of the ‘80s.

For her final race, in Japan, she is not promising a memorable farewell.

“I will definitely make sure I’m in shape,” she said. “But I won’t be in top shape, not at all.”

Asked to predict a time, she laughed and said: “Under 12 seconds.”