She’s Not Golden, but an Oldie Who Makes the Olympic Team

Meredith Rainey had just run the fastest 800 meters of her life, the third fastest ever by an American, to win the event Monday night at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. Still, her time of 1 minute 57.04 seconds was more than a tenth of a second behind the American record set 11 years ago. After all these years, U.S. women runners, most of them anyway, are still chasing Mary Slaney.

Moments later, onto the track for the start of the 5,000 meters stepped Slaney. Many among the crowd of 12,349 inside the Centennial Olympic Stadium must have wondered what she is still chasing.

It is a question that not even she can answer. The closest she can come is to say that she runs because she always has, having emerged as a world-class athlete when she was 14-year-old Mary Decker.

But whatever it is that drives her was on display Monday night. She did not win, finishing second to three-time world cross-country champion and 1992 10,000-meter bronze medalist Lynn Jennings. But the spirit Slaney, a medical marvel after at least 18 operations on her legs, showed in making her fourth Olympic team was the same as it was at her best, when she won two world championships in 1983.

Jennings, 35, won in 15:28.18. Slaney, 37, ran 15:29.39. Feeling very young, Amy Rudolph, 22, was third in 15:29.91.

“It’s up there, simply because it was a longshot to be here,” Slaney said when asked how this race rates among her greatest moments on the track.

Earlier in the day, John Godina, the former NCAA shotput and discus champion from UCLA, sent observers scurrying to the sport’s history books. He finished second to Anthony Washington in the discus, 48 hours after finishing second in the shotput to become the first American man since Bud Houser in 1924 to make the Olympic team in both events.

But the history on most people’s minds here during the 5,000 meters went back only to 1984, when Slaney, the favorite in the 3,000 meters, got her feet tangled with Zola Budd’s and ended up on her back, in tears, on the Coliseum infield.

That was considered her best chance to win an Olympic medal, and, until Monday night, her last one. She finished eighth in the 3,000 in 1988 and did not qualify for the U.S. team in 1992. Even so, she is now able to joke about ’84.

“When the Olympics were given to Atlanta, of course I wanted to be there,” she said last week. “No. 1, the last time the Olympics were on U.S. soil, I ended up in the soil.”

That did not seem as funny with about 200 meters to go when, eerily while running in second place, Slaney’s left heel hit Rudolph’s right shin. Slaney, more experienced running in crowds than she was 12 years ago, did not stagger but did peer over her shoulder to give Rudolph a warning look.

Asked if she had a flashback, Slaney said, “A little bit.”

But Slaney did not remember who clipped her.

“I did,” admitted a sheepish Rudolph, who was sitting next to Slaney at the post-race news conference. “I’m sorry.”

In case anyone in the crowd did not recall that dark day in Los Angeles, the fall was replayed on the giant screen inside the stadium during the victory lap by Jennings, Slaney and Rudolph. Just as in the Coliseum in ‘84, the spectators in Atlanta booed Budd.

Even with the slight bump here Monday night, it was a clean race. And a memorable one.

Slaney, who used to rush to the front when she was younger, was content to remain in the back of the 14-woman field for the first third of the race. Then she worked her way toward the front, taking over first place with 3,000 meters remaining and staying there for three laps.

With 1,000 meters to go, Libbie Johnson made the most dramatic move of the race, sprinting from the middle of the pack into first. Jennings, Rudolph and Cheri Goddard went with her. Slaney did not.

As she dropped into fifth place, it seemed like her latest comeback, this one from serious Achilles’ tendon surgery in September of ‘94, was over. Earlier in this meet, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, 34, failed to win the heptathlon for the first time in 12 years; and Carl Lewis, who will be 35 in two weeks, finished eighth in the 100 meters. He looked no more fit for this level of competition in Monday’s long-jump qualifying, although he did make the final. Perhaps it was time to write Slaney’s final chapter.

Slaney sensed it too, but only for a moment.

“I lost contact, and I thought, ‘OK, you’re not supposed to do that,’ ” she said. “I told myself, ‘Get back up there.’ ”

That she did. Summoning the resolve, Slaney began making up ground at 600 meters. With one lap left, she was only five meters behind Johnson, Jennings and Rudolph. On the backstretch, Slaney looked stronger than all of them.

She was on Jennings’ shoulder when the incident with Rudolph occurred. It probably made no difference as far as winning the race was concerned. Jennings, who has been doing speed work with Rainey in San Luis Obispo, was not going to be denied. But all Slaney wanted to do was make the team.

A athlete who was born less than two years before Slaney made her first Olympic team in 1980 failed in his initial attempt Monday. But Obea Moore, a high school junior from Pasadena, had nothing to be embarrassed about, reaching the semifinals of the 400 against runners such as Michael Johnson, Quincy Watts and Butch Reynolds before bowing out.

“I told him not to get down on himself, that what he has done is exceptional and he doesn’t have to do everything at once,” Johnson said later. “There’s a lot of high school phenoms, and there’s this big hole that most of them fall into.”

Slaney also could have told him about falls, and about climbing back from them.

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Trials Notes

Joetta Clark of Somerset, N.J., and Suzy Hamilton of Eugene, Ore., also qualified for the team in the 800 meters. Hamilton lunged at the line to hold off Kathi Harris-Rounds for third. . . . A local high jumper, Tisha Waller of nearby Decatur, Ga., was the women’s winner at 6 feet 4 3/4 inches, beating Connie Teaberry of Toledo, Ohio, on fewer misses. . . . Cynthea Rhodes of Austin, Texas, was the women’s triple jump winner at 46 feet 1 1/2 inches. Wendy Brown of West Covina was fourth, missing the team by 1 1/2 inches.