Bottom Line Is Starting Line : Money Replaces Drug Use as the Dominant Issue at World Track Championships

STUTTGART, Germany — Liza Minnelli agreed to appear in Friday night’s opening ceremony for track and field’s fourth World Championships, but she withdrew, according to organizers, because of a dispute with her agents. International Amateur Athletic Federation officials, who govern the sport, can sympathize, having recently found themselves on less than friendly terms with agents.

In an official statement, organizers said Chuck Berry was “more than just a replacement” for the opening ceremony, but Minnelli would have been more appropriate. In her best-known movie role, as Sally Bowles in “Cabaret,” set about 300 miles northeast of here in Berlin, one of the featured songs declared: “Money makes the world go ‘round.”

In track and field, money makes the World Championships go ‘round.

“We used to come to big events and talk only about drugs,” IAAF General Secretary Istvan Gyulai said Friday. “Now, we talk only about money. That is an improvement, I think. I’d rather be involved in money than drugs.”

Dollar signs hang from every corner of this industrial city in southwestern Germany’s Neckar River Valley. Flags from participating countries traditionally add color to streets in cities playing host to international sporting events, but the logos most evident in Stuttgart are those of the IAAF’s 13 corporate sponsors, from Mercedes-Benz to Uncle Ben’s.

In its hometown, Mercedes-Benz, naturally, is the most pervasive. The 53,351-capacity stadium, where the competition began Saturday, was named for Adolf Hitler when constructed in 1933. Today, it bears the name of the prestigious automobile manufacturer’s founder, Gottlieb Daimler, and is located on Mercedesstrasse. Champions in 44 events during the meet will each receive a Mercedes-Benz.

Or if they are like U.S. 400-meter runner Michael Johnson, who boasts that he already has a Mercedes worth more than three times the new Class C models offered here, they can exchange the cars for their market value of $28,000.

“Anybody good enough to win one already has one,” Johnson said.

With that kind of money available to athletes, the IAAF dropped its next-to-last pretension of amateurism last week. The last is the second word of its title.

At the urging of Ollan Cassell, USA Track & Field’s executive director, the federation’s 181 members voted unanimously Wednesday to allow countries to eliminate the rule that required athletes to deposit their earnings from the sport in trust funds.

According to the 11-year-old rule, which ended the often-ignored prohibition against appearance fees, prize money and other compensation for competing in track and field, athletes were mandated to subtract training expenses from their earnings and place the rest in trust funds, which would become accessible to them upon retirement.

But the rule was subverted when national associations, including USA Track & Field, allowed athletes to report virtually all of their earnings as training expenses. For example, among Johnson’s expenses were a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz, a pickup truck, a house in his hometown of Dallas and an apartment near his training site in Waco, Tex.

“It would not be wise to pretend the rule was working,” the IAAF’s Gyulai said after this week’s vote. “People are aware of reality.”

On the heels of the IAAF’s latest attempt to cope with professionalism, however, was an emerging new reality, at least according to many athletes, who say they will not be satisfied with a Mercedes-Benz for each winner in the next World Championships, in 1995 at Gothenburg, Sweden.

After the IAAF announced a $91-million deal with the European Broadcasters Union for the rights to the 1993 and ’95 World Championships, the International Assn. of Athletes’ Representatives--agents, for short--threatened to hold their athletes out of this meet unless the federation agreed to share the wealth by offering prize money. They demanded $10 million, including $100,000 for each champion.

The IAAF responded initially by splitting $1.3 million among its 200 countries, telling them to spend it as they wished. With its $70,000 share, USATF agreed to pay prize money to its athletes for this meet, with $3,000 for second place, $1,500 for third and $500 for fourth through eighth.

USATF did not include champions because the IAAF subsequently announced its arrangement with Mercedes-Benz to award cars to gold medalists. That soothed the athletes, but for how long?

“This was a compromise,” sprinter Carl Lewis said. “They dodged the bullet this year. Next time, we’ll have a machine gun. This issue is not going to die.”

Gyulai agreed.

“I have a feeling we are going to vote for full professionalism, but step by step,” he said. “It’s more realistic to look at 1997 for prize money than 1995.”

Some agents, including Algerian Amar Brahmia, claim that the boycott would have been successful this year if their ranks had not been broken by the IAAF’s alleged guarantee of appearance fees to prominent athletes, such as Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergei Bubka and Lewis.

Lewis’ manager, Joe Douglas, denied this week that his athlete was offered money by the IAAF.

“I can’t answer anything about Bubka, but I can assure you Carl is not being paid to run here,” he said.

Nike officials said they doubt that Bubka required payment by the IAAF because his contract with the sports apparel company offers him substantial bonuses for winning here.

But Brahmia was so convinced otherwise, he insisted early this week that his star client, defending 1,500-meter champion Noureddine Morceli of Algeria, would stage a one-man boycott unless he was paid to appear by the IAAF.

“We know that they pay,” Brahmia said. “I have proof they pay.”

Through Algeria’s track and field federation, the IAAF is threatening to suspend Morceli for the next two months if he does not compete here. That would force him out of the remainder of the European circuit, which is lucrative for the elite athletes.

Brahmia said Morceli earns as much as $60,000 per meet and has the potential for $100,000 if he breaks a world record. Lewis recently earned $100,000 for running two races in Lausanne, Switzerland, and he and 1992 Olympic 100-meter champion Linford Christie of Great Britain each were paid $150,000 for running one race against each other in Gateshead, England.

Lewis, who recently turned 32, said last week that he cannot afford to retire.

“I would hate to go now because we’re just starting to make some real money,” he said.

Real money, however, is in the pocket of the beholder. The more money available to athletes, the more it is apparent that there is considerable disparity in pay for men and women.

After the Lewis-Christie race in Gateshead, the Women’s Advisory Group of the British Athletic Federation protested that all of the women in the meet combined did not earn the amount paid to each sprinter. According to them, Christie routinely earns $45,000 per race in Great Britain, while the country’s other reigning Olympic champion, intermediate hurdler Sally Gunnell, earns $15,000.

The Olympic women’s 1,500-meter champion, Hassiba Boulmerka of Algeria, has refused to run more than occasionally on the European circuit this summer, complaining that she is paid considerably less than her compatriot, Morceli, who finished seventh in the Olympic men’s 1,500.

“I only get paid 50% as much as the men,” she said. “That doesn’t give me the urge to compete a lot.”

Another complaint often heard within the sport concerns the increasing influence of sponsors. Earlier this summer, a Nike representative was in the infield during a meet in San Jose to advise Bubka on when to quit vaulting for the day so that he would not spoil the impact of his appearance at the following week’s meet in Eugene, Ore., which was sponsored by--guess who?--Nike.

With a sigh, Enrico Jacomini, a special assistant to IAAF President Primo Nebiolo, said last week: “These are the problems you have when an amateur sport becomes professional.”