HAS IT BECOME A CIRCUS?

When Cosmas Ndeti and Uta Pippig won the Boston Marathon, they were whisked away to the White House, there to take the morning air with the First Jogger.

They were back in Boston a year later to defend their titles.

When German Silva won in New York, he was invited onto David Letterman’s stage to make a wrong turn like the one he had made into Central Park near race’s end, a move that made everybody’s blooper tape and set up a finish that made everybody’s 11 o’clock highlights.

When Tegla Laroupe won the New York Marathon’s women’s race, she became a six-figure commodity in the running community.

Silva and Laroupe were in New York the next year, taking on all comers.

But somebody had better put out an all points bulletin for Rolando Vera. And has anyone seen Jose Luis Molina lately?

They are the most recent winners of the Los Angeles Marathon, men’s division. Their female counterparts, Nadia Prassad and Lyubov Klochkov, are also missing.

In their places are a bicycle tour and skating race, all the revenue such events can generate and all the scorn they have drawn from the sport’s elite runners, the vast majority and all the best of whom plan to be elsewhere for Sunday’s 12th running of the Los Angeles Marathon.

A marathon is a serious athletic event, the elites say. It’s the big leagues, and bicycling and skating are for Sunday in the park. They want to be center stage, not part of a three-ring circus.

“They might as well call it the Extreme Games,” says Kathy Smith, who takes racing seriously and reacted to the addition of the ancillary events with disdain.

The L.A. Marathon, an event spawned by the world-class competition of the 1984 Olympics, has grown into a Sunday happening that will include about 40,000 people, running, cycling and skating, sweating to the music in a party atmosphere while being watched by hundreds of thousands on the course and, perhaps, millions on television.

It is . . .

” . . . a festival,” says Mark Plaatjes, who won the 1991 race and used it as a springboard to a World Championship.

“I think a lot of people look at L.A. as an opportunity to win a second-tier race, and if they can do it, they might be able to move up to bigger things.”

He has an affinity for the city, the event and its owners, Bill Burke and Marie Patrick, because, as a native South African, ostracized by the world’s athletic organizations during the time of apartheid, he was welcomed to run in Los Angeles. He sees opportunity going to waste.

“It’s the right market--a great market, great weather, Los Angeles,” Plaatjes says. “And it’s the right time of the year, spring, after runners have put on all their winter miles [of training] and are looking for a race.

“Boston has people who come from all over the world, but why not L.A.? What they have is OK if that’s what they want, a festival or an event, rather than an athletic spectacle. Bill and I are friends. So are Marie and I. They gave me my first break, but I still don’t think they think elites are necessary for a successful marathon.”

Maybe they aren’t--unless you want sponsors and television coverage.

“Who is going to tune in and watch somebody run for four hours?” asked Ann Roberts, who recruits elite runners for the New York Marathon.

Or bike? Or skate?

Television focuses on the elite race, and the recipe for getting a field has one ingredient.

“Elite athletes are like all professional athletes,” said Burke. “They go where the money is.”

It’s not in Los Angeles this year, and it hasn’t been for a while. From a purse of $354,550 in 1992, Los Angeles has scaled down to $66,000 this year, plus the requisite automobiles.

Plaatjes has helped recruit some of the elite fields for the L.A. Marathon, and has run in it since winning, but won’t this year after offering to run for a $15,000 guarantee and being told that he was welcome to run for prize money: $15,000 to win.

Instead, he will run in April at Boston, where he had no problem getting his guarantee, which is considered at the low end of a scale in which elite runners with proven fast times can negotiate $15,000-$30,000 for lending their feet to an event.

The elite field for Sunday’s race is made up of runners recruited by Carlos Godoy, a former coach who checked around the world to see who he could get with his small budget. The going appearance-money rate for those who will line up in front on Figueroa and Sixth streets on Sunday is $4,000-$5,000, with individually contracted bonuses starting at $5,000 for a time of 2:11 or below for men, 2:32 for women.

Only four men have run faster than 2:11 in the 11 Los Angeles Marathons. Only eight women have run sub-2:32 races.

The prize money is at the low end for marathons, with Boston’s $75,000 to win, Chicago’s $50,000 and New York’s $30,000 well above it, and even the $25,000 of Houston and $20,000 of the Twin Cities commanding more respect.

The Los Angeles Marathon has posted bonuses of $25,000 to any man finishing under 2:10, $35,000 under 2:09, $50,000 under 2:08. Women’s bonuses start at $5,000 for a time under 2:32.

No man has run under 2:10 in L.A., few women under 2:32.

Ah, Burke reminds, but that was on a different course. This year’s has cut out hills along Sunset Boulevard near Dodger Stadium, adding a flat run toward the downtown finish. About 200 feet of mountains no longer have to be climbed.

“I think this is the right course for a 2:10,” he said.

But is it the field for a 2:10?

“That is the question,” he admits.

There are plenty of runners who can turn a 2:10, which is Burke’s Holy Grail, but only one of them is in the L.A. field, Wodaju Bulti of Ethiopia. And his 2:08.44 personal best was run nine years ago in Rotterdam.

Neither Patrick nor Burke has trouble with the word “festival” being applied to the race--”every runner is a star,” Patrick says--but Burke bristles at the notion that Los Angeles is lagging behind the rest of the world.

“I’ve tried big prize money and I’ve tried big appearance money, and I’ve found out that you’re never assured that, just because you’ve spent either prize money or appearance money, you’re going to get a fast time,” he says.

“Look at that race we had a couple of years ago when we had Mark and we had just an unbelievable field. We had the former New York Marathon winner [Bob Kempainen, who also won the U.S. Olympic trials]. We had Arturo Barrios. We had everybody and we spent more than a few bucks . . . in excess of $500,000. It just didn’t happen.”

That was 1995, when Vera won the race in 2:11.39 in wind and rain.

Maybe you won’t get a fast time, but you can get the runners with the potential to run one.

The problem may be consistency.

“They’ve been all over the ballpark with prize money and appearance money,” Plaatjes says. “They need to commit to one thing or the other and stick with it until they see if it works.

“When they do, word spreads throughout the running community: Go to L.A., there’s good money there. But they’ve never given it a chance.”

Maybe that’s the future.

Burke talks of this race being a benchmark for the new course and a three- to five-year plan of increased prize and appearance money to enhance the elite field.

“What’s different from what we’re doing now is that our prize money is not competitive with Boston and New York, so that’s the first thing we’ve got to do,” he says. “And our appearance money is not competitive with Boston or New York, and that’s the second thing we’ve got to do. So we have to increase that also.

“Bonus money, we’re competitive with them. So we’re really only competitive with only 33% of the major components.”

And they have a festival.

There is more to it than that. While most of Sunday’s runners are watching the clock, seeking a personal best, there will be 45 or so elites who are actually racing each other.

“People say that marathoning is the one sport where the common guy competes with the elite guy: same course, same clock,” Patrick says. “When you look at it, amateur football players can’t play in the NFL. I’m not going to go out and play with Steffi Graf in tennis. But this is one sport where I can do the same thing on the same course on the same day as Steve Jones [a New York Marathon winner].”

Is anyone excited about running the same course as Marco Villa of Mexico or Mbarak Hussein of Kenya or Elfenesh Alemu of Ethiopia, all on the elite list in Los Angeles for this year’s, uh, festival?

“I think it’s a matter of civic pride,” Burke says. “L.A. is a major player in every avenue you can talk about: the arts, business and athletics. This is the hometown of the Dodgers and the Lakers. We have this worldwide reputation in other sports, and this thing that I’ve been into, this civic festival for the city, I’m still way back in the pack when it comes to elite athlete performance. I don’t like that.”

In that he is in step with the elites, who look at the race and wonder.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Dollar Race

A look at the winner’s purse in some American races:

* Boston: $75,000

* Chicago: $50,000

* New York: $30,000

* Houston: $25,000

* Twin Cities: $20,000

* Pittsburgh: $15,000

* Cleveland: $15,000

* Los Angeles: $15,000

A look at posted prize money for L . A . Marathon through the years:

*--*

Year Open Div. Total Prizes 1986 $50,200 $106,200 1987 $85,000 $176,000 1988 $105,000 $191,573 1989 $108,700 $215,220 1990 $162,700 $272,500 1991 $310,000 $378,000 1992 $205,000 $426,640 1993 $70,000 $169,490 1994 $60,000 $150,640 1995 $75,000 $169,330 1996 $75,000 $145,900 1997 $66,000 $139,500

*--*

Comparing the Races

BOSTON MARATHON

Established: 1897; Field: About 12,000, all of whom qualify by times, with younger men having run a 3:10, women, 3:40; Entry fee: $75; Economic impact: About $60 million annually.

NEW YORK MARATHON

Established: 1970; Field: About 35,000; Entry fee: $35 U.S. plus USA T&F; fees, total of about $60, $75 foreign; Economic impact: About $140 million annually.

L.A. MARATHON

Established: 1986; Field: About 20,000; Entry fee: $45; Economic impact: $12.4 million.