Mt. SAC Relays a Winning Mix of Old and New

In the spring of an Olympic year, everyone in track and field is optimistic, and there could not have been a better setting for that mood than at the 38th annual Mt. San Antonio College Relays Sunday in Walnut. The weather was not too warm or too cool, the grass on the rolling hills surrounding Hilmer Lodge Stadium was lush and the near-capacity crowd was enthusiastic.

Even the losers could find no reason to complain, and there were some prominent ones such as Olympic gold medalists Mike Marsh, Quincy Watts, Marie-Jose Perec and Kevin Young.

But start with the winners. The star of the meet depends on whether you prefer the proven superstar who still believes he has something to prove or the star in the making. The former is Carl Lewis, the latter is Ato Boldon, and the two sprinters could meet before the year is complete. On Sunday, however, they dominated their orbits.

Boldon, the UCLA senior from Trinidad, hardly emerged from nowhere, having finished third in the 100 meters in the world championships last summer. But he did prove that he was not a one-year wonder, taking a tenth off his personal best with a time of 9.93 seconds. Only six men have ever run faster.

His coach, John Smith, was not surprised. He told Boldon that he would have to run that fast to win. Smith was right. Marsh, the 200-meter champion four years ago in the Barcelona Olympics and the national champion last year in the 100, finished second in 9.95.

Boldon won with a superb start, then held off the fast-finishing Marsh. The most impressive closer in the race, however, was Jeff Williams, who finished third in a personal best of 10.14. He seemed to be just reaching third gear when the race ended, which should bode well for him this year in his best race, the 200.

For this meet, though, he left the 200 to Lewis, who handled it admirably with a time of 20.19. That will not be fast enough when Lewis meets Michael Johnson and Williams later, but it was one of the fastest times he has run at this time of the year.

He was happy enough to still be talking about tripling in the 100, 200 and long jump in the U.S. Olympic trials in June. He ran a wind-aided 10.10 nine days ago in the 100 in Texas and will open his season in the long jump in two weeks.

“Six weeks ago, I was written off for dead,” said Lewis, who turns 35 this summer. “Everyone was snickering, saying that I was on my farewell tour. Now, if I compete like I did today and in Texas and put in a little more emotional effort, there’s no way I can be kept off that team in my events.”

Sneaking peeks while warming up for his race, he saw nothing in the long jump competition Sunday to alert him. Three of the United States’ best were there in world-record holder Mike Powell, Joe Greene and Kareem Streete-Thompson, but none managed even a 27-foot jump until Powell’s finale of 27-3 3/4. Greene was second at 26-9 1/4 and Streete-Thompson was third at 25-10 3/4.

Lewis’ 200 time was the third-fastest of the year outdoors, behind the 19.87 that Williams ran last week and the 20.17 that, oddly enough, Vincent Henderson ran in the “B” race at Mt. SAC. Henderson, formerly of Arkansas, was third in the 100 in the national championships two years ago but had no significant 200 times until Sunday.

Another “B” standout was Lamont Smith, who ran the fastest time in the world this year in the 400 with a time of 44.63. Smith, whose previous best was 45.30, ran for Blinn Junior College in Texas, then decided to join Coach Tom Tellez and the Santa Monica Track Club’s Houston branch.

If Smith went largely unnoticed Sunday, it was because the “A” race in the 400 included Watts, who is trying to rebound from a disastrous 1995. He appears as if he has, running his second race in nine days under 45 seconds with a time of 44.96, but it earned him only third place behind Kevin Little’s 44.77 and Deon Minor’s 44.94.

Watts was upbeat afterward, as was Perec, the Olympic 400-meter champion from France, who was doing speed work at Mt. SAC and finished second in the 100 in 11.14.

Watts’ former training partner, Kevin Young, had a rougher time, finishing fifth in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles. He won that race in 1992 in Barcelona, breaking Edwin Moses’ world record. But he has dropped out of the international scene the past two years and no longer has sponsorship. He would have had to pay his own way from his home in Atlanta to Sunday’s meet, but his manager, Roger Lipkis, persuaded USA Track & Field to contribute.

“We couldn’t really ask them to use development funds because Kevin is an Olympic champion,” Lipkis said. “But we convinced them that he is a redeveloping athlete.”

On a beautiful day like Sunday, who could argue?