Where’s Dave When Dan Needs a Push? : Goodwill Games: O’Brien decides to take it easy in 1,500 and misses breaking his decathlon record by 176 points.

Dan O’Brien set a Goodwill Games record in winning the decathlon by 538 points over his closest pursuer Friday. Everyone except O’Brien seemed to believe he should have done better.

Needing to run the 1,500 meters, the final event in the two-day, 10-event competition, in a respectable but hardly out-of-reach 4 minutes 40.92 seconds to surpass his two-year-old world record, O’Brien trotted around the track at a pace only four seconds a lap faster than the fastest walkers, finishing in 5:10.94.

He did not collapse out of exhaustion. He did not even bend over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. No, while he stood in the infield and posed for photographers, it was his unhappy coaches who stood beside the Petrovsky Stadium track and hyperventilated.

“No doubt we’ll have a little heart-to-heart about my effort level and what not,” O’Brien said later, anticipating his next meeting with his coaches, Mike Keller and Rick Sloan.

Moments after O’Brien completed his afternoon jog, ending the decathlon, Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor, the only man to clear 8 feet in the high jump, went over the bar at 7-10 1/2, waved to the crowd of about 10,000 and waved off an attempt at the world record.

That was particularly galling to Goodwill Games officials because Sotomayor had guaranteed them that he would attempt to break his record of 8-0 1/2 if he was in that position. “I was too tired,” he said, bringing to a close the dissatisfying track and field competition.

Heeding their motto, “Uniting the World’s Best,” Goodwill Games officials assembled a stellar cast of track and field athletes, then were disappointed in performances that, for the most part, were uninspired.

“All we can do is bring them together,” said one official who did not want to be identified. “If they don’t want to put out, what can we do?”

Athletes complained about the heat and the wind, but there also was a suggestion that arriving at the starting line was all that was expected of them. Although many of the bigger-name athletes received hefty appearance fees, prospective bonuses for world records did not compare with those in major invitational meets. For example, an athlete who sets a world record in the long jump in a meet Sunday at Sestriere, Italy, will receive a Ferrari Testarossa.

“I had a large financial incentive,” O’Brien said when asked whether he would have received a bonus by setting a world record, “but it wasn’t large enough.”

O’Brien, 28, of Moscow, Ida., said he was satisfied with the victory and a total of 8,715 points, 176 fewer than his world record, and appeared not only willing but eager to defend his position at a news conference. He acknowledged that he did not do his best, but he said it was good enough for him.

“My coaches told me to go out there and challenge the 1,500,” he said. “It’s something coaches can say because they don’t know how I feel after nine events.

“It’s hard to go out there and run that race after you’ve already (clinched) the event by 600 points. At that point, the world record becomes irrelevant. It’s easier when there’s somebody pushing you.”

O’Brien’s lead over U.S. teammate Steve Fritz, the eventual runner-up with 8,177 points, was 623 after the first five events Thursday. More notable was O’Brien’s 16-point edge over his world-record pace, which he extended to 38 by running the first event Friday, the 110-meter hurdles, in 13.81 seconds.

A sub-par discus throw of 157 feet 10 inches and pole vault of 16-1 left him one point behind his record, but he was still within seven after a 204-1 javelin throw.

The crowd stirred when the public-address announcer spelled out the situation, but O’Brien’s coaches acted as if they expected to be disappointed. He needed a similar time in the 1,500 to break the world record earlier this summer in the national championships at Knoxville, Tenn., and loafed in at 5:16.42.

Asked how he expected O’Brien to do at the distance here, Sloan said: “I’m reasonably confident he’s going to finish.”

O’Brien did that but was 44 seconds behind the winner of the event and nine seconds behind the next-to-last finisher.

Craig Masback, a former miler who was a commentator here for Turner Broadcasting, said O’Brien has developed a phobia about the 1,500, pointing out that he once ran it as fast as 4:33.19 and recorded a 4:42.10 in setting his world record.

And Keller said the problem was as much in O’Brien’s head as in his legs.

“There’s a big disappointment with the 1,500 meters,” Keller said. “It always seems to come down to that for us. It’s not a physical thing, it’s a mental thing with him, obviously.

“Somewhere along the line, we’ll need a sports psychologist to deal with the 1,500. We need to do something different than we’re doing. Obviously, it’s not working for us.

“We’ve had two opportunities to break a world record, his own world record, and he hasn’t been able to do it. . . . We need a victory over the 1,500 more than anything else.”

Keller also suggested that O’Brien was reluctant to suffer the pain needed to run a strong 1,500, adding: “He’s run 4:33 in the 1,500 back in 1989, but maybe his memory is pretty good and he remembers how much it hurt.”

O’Brien said he can still run the 1,500 fast if he needs the time to win.

“I could have run 4:50 today, very easily,” he said. “If I had had a better pole vault and discus, I really would have gone for it. It’s hard to say whether I would have gotten it. But since I didn’t feel I was fit enough in the 1,500 to get the record and had already won the competition, I was just concentrating on finishing.

“There’s Bruce Jenners out there who love that race. I’ve yet to find a liking for it. Maybe I’ve got to develop the mental toughness. But I believe that when the time comes for me to run a 1,500 like I want, I’ll do it.”

Perhaps he will find out for sure later this summer in Talence, France, where he is scheduled to compete against this year’s world decathlon leader, Eduard Hamalainen of Belarus.

Goodwill Games Notes

In other events on the final day of track and field competition, Americans won five gold medals, sweeping all four relays. Derek Mills, Andrew Valmon, Jason Rouser and Michael Johnson won the men’s 1,600 relay in 2:59.42. Mike Marsh, Leroy Burrell, Sam Jefferson and Carl Lewis won the men’s 400 relay in 38.30. Natasha Kaiser-Brown, Maicel Malone, Jearl Miles and Michele Collins won the women’s 1,600-meter relay in 3:22.27. Cheryl Taplin, Dannette Young, Collins and Gwen Torrence won the women’s 400 relay in 42.98. . . . Kenny Harrison led a 1-2 U.S. finish in the triple jump, sailing 57-2 1/4. Mike Conley was second at 56-7 1/4.

Cuban heavyweight Felix Savon landed a thudding right hand to the stomach to drop Russian Sergei Machalov to his knees for a gold-medal knockout after two minutes. It was the first punch he landed in the match. Four Americans will box for gold in today’ six matches.

Norway’s Trine Hattestad was in for an unpleasant surprise after winning the gold medal in the javelin. Hattestad, the 1993 world champion who had a winning throw of 215 feet 8 inches, stood proudly on the medal podium as the national anthem began. The wrong national anthem. The Swedish national anthem.