WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Reno, McPeak Reunite in Quest for Gold

Order at the beach will be restored this week if, as expected, Nancy Reno of Encinitas and Holly McPeak of Manhattan Beach announce that they have again teamed after a short separation.

The world’s most dominant beach volleyball team split a few months ago after winning 11 consecutive tournaments and clinching a berth in the 1996 Summer Olympics, where the former UCLA players are heavily favored to win the first gold medal since the sport was added to the program.

From all accounts, McPeak and Reno were compatible off the sand as well. But Reno wanted to play with Karolyn Kirby, a friend and former partner who also is an Olympic contender.

“She was happy with me but had second thoughts about how good Karolyn and she could be,” McPeak said last week. “Which is hard to believe after winning 11 in a row.

“I was shocked. . . . We never fought or had any problems.”

Reno and Kirby played in Puerto Rico and Brazil. Reno then realized she and McPeak were a better team.

“She got that out of her system, and we’re looking forward to the Olympics,” McPeak said. “She had unfinished business with Karolyn.

“It was hard to believe, but what do you do? There’s nothing I could do. I couldn’t talk her into [not going].”

They are tentatively scheduled to return together at the world championships in Rio de Janeiro, Feb. 29-March 3.

“Maybe we gained something,” McPeak said. “She’ll be more confident. I never had any doubts.”

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Chris Witty can recite from memory the menu at McDonald’s, which is not a talent that U.S. Speedskating officials valued highly in their search for a replacement for Bonnie Blair.

But Witty has improved her diet--”I have a salad every now and then”--and her skating as well. In the first two weeks of the World Cup season, Witty, 20, of West Allis, Wis., won the 1,000 meters in Germany and the Netherlands. No American woman before Blair, a five-time gold medalist in three Winter Olympics before retiring last year, had ever won on the World Cup circuit.

“In Europe, I’m hearing a lot of, ‘Oh, here’s another American sprinter,’ and, ‘Oh, the new Bonnie Blair,’ ” Witty said. “That’s fun. I like it.”

Blair is more than Witty’s role model. Before the 1998 Olympics, Witty got her autograph. But as much as she has learned from the 31-year-old Blair, who announced her engagement last week to speedskater David Cruikshank, Witty wants her to stay retired.

“Hopefully, for the rest of us who are enjoying the joy of winning, she’ll stay away,” Witty said.

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To say that the victory by Venezuela’s Francisco Sanchez in the 50 meters at swimming’s world short-course championships was a surprise is an understatement. Organizers at Rio de Janeiro did not have a copy of his national anthem.

Sanchez is virtually unknown outside his own country and Tempe, Ariz., where he swims for the Sun Devils Masters Aquatic Club while attempting to improve his English so that he can accept a scholarship to Arizona State. Asked if Sanchez might be a medal contender in Atlanta next summer, his coach, Ron Johnson, said that might be another understatement. He believes Sanchez could challenge defending champion Alexander Popov of Russia.

“If he continues making progress, watch out, Popov,” Johnson said.

World Scene Notes

Michael Johnson will find out this week whether he has a chance to become the first man to win the 200 and 400 meters in the same Olympics when the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which governs track and field, meets in Monte Carlo. Conventional wisdom is that the IAAF will change the schedule for Atlanta next summer to make the double easier for Johnson, but his agent, Brad Hunt, is not optimistic. . . . The United States has only three berths in weightlifting at Atlanta after the team finished 31st in last month’s world championships.

Acknowledging they erred in routing the torch relay through Yale, Okla., instead of Prague, Okla., Jim Thorpe’s birthplace, Atlanta organizing committee officials have planned a meeting with state leaders. “We want to listen to them and really find out what their desire is for the torch relay in the state,” Atlanta official David Emanuel said. . . . A U.S. Olympic Committee ethics panel sent undisclosed recommendations to President LeRoy Walker after meeting in Chicago last week to review conflict-of-interest questions involving Bill Hybl’s candidacy for president. . . . The 12-member U.S. decathlon team, including three-time world champion Dan O’Brien, is training this week at the new ARCO Training Center at Chula Vista.

Times staff writers Elliott Almond and Maryann Hudson contributed to this story.