Barnes Puts His Spin on Harding Saga

Randy Barnes, 6 feet 3 and 305 pounds, sees a similarity between himself and Tonya Harding, 5-1 and 105:

Presumption of guilt.

Barnes, world record-holder in the shotput, served a two-year suspension from 1990-92 for steroid abuse, a charge he denies to this day.

Harding is the figure skater some believe should be removed from the U.S. Olympic team for a presumed role in an attack on teammate Nancy Kerrigan.

“In a way, her case is like mine,” Barnes said.

“She’s a person who has some rough edges, so people assume guilt based just on that. With me, people thought: ‘Well, he’s so big . . . he must be using steroids.’ ”

Where his case differs is in a recent offer by Nike, the shoe firm, to pay $25,000 of Harding’s legal fees.

“I spent $125,000 defending myself,” Barnes said. “When I read (about the Nike offer to Harding), I almost threw up. No one offered to help me.

“Talk about justice. When it was all over, I guess I got the best justice I could afford.”

Trivia time: When Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, what was his salary?

Lucky break: Many football fans regretted the early retirement of Jim Brown, who left the Cleveland Browns for Hollywood at 29.

But not his old blocking back, Leroy Kelly.

After Brown left, Kelly won two NFL rushing titles in a row. Recently, he was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“I would never have been here (at a Hall of Fame news conference) if he hadn’t retired,” Kelly said.

Just wondering: Whatever happened to high school milers?

Of the 10 fastest miles ever run by California high school athletes, the most recent was 1986. Tim Danielson of Chula Vista is still the state’s only four-minute miler. In 1966, he ran 3:59.4.

Of those 10 fastest miles (from 3:59.4 to 4:06.5), six were run in the 1970s.

Olympic facts: Lillehammer, 110 miles north of Oslo, is in Norway’s Troll Park Area, a region popular for skiing and named after mischievous creatures of local legend.

Lillehammer’s most famous native, by some accounts, is Thor Bjorkland, inventor of the cheese slicer.

In environmentally sensitive Norway, spectators at Olympic venues will be eating off plates that will be fed later to Norway’s pigs.

The concessionaires’ plates are made of potato starch, a main course for Norwegian farm animals.

Double ace: “I hit a very straight shot,” golfer Marina Barnard said, to which her partners said, “No kidding!” last week, after she aced two consecutive holes at Heartwell Golf Course in Long Beach.

On the 121-yard No. 6, Barnard, 62, used a five-wood. On the 121-yard No. 7, she used a driver. Both went into the cup on the fly.

Barnard, a three-times-a-week Heartwell golfer, went on to shoot a 73.

Easy to please: Vito Stellino of the Baltimore Sun, on Buddy Ryan becoming coach of the Phoenix Cardinals:

“Ryan will do three things--win 10 games a year, make the playoffs and sell tickets. In Phoenix, that’s more than enough.”

Trivia answer: $70,000.

Quotebook: Figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, asked by talk show host Conan O’Brien why she decided not to seek a second consecutive Olympic gold medal in figure skating: “Safer.”