Baiul On Thin Ice Before She Reached Sobriety Checkpoint

The car was going nearly 100 mph in a 45-mph zone, the 19-year-old driver had a blood-alcohol level of .168, but the tree that interrupted both let Oksana Baiul off easy.

Baiul, the 1994 Olympic women’s figure skating champion, walked away from that accident during the early morning hours of Jan. 12, 1997, with a concussion and a cut on her head that required 12 stitches to close.

Then, because of a technicality--her blood test was conducted by the hospital that treated her, not the police--Baiul was fined $90 for speeding and was ordered to volunteer for community service and to undergo an “alcohol education” program.

No big deal, right?

Perhaps that explains Baiul’s cavalier attitude--triple flip, to borrow some skating terminology--when discussing the incident in interviews shortly after the accident.

Asked by NBC’s Jane Pauley to describe what happened that night, Baiul glibly replied, “What happened? I was driving the car, and then I parked my car in a tree.”

On Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, Baiul blithely dismissed the suggestion that she had to be drunk after imbibing “four or five” Long Island iced teas that night, because, she reasoned with a shrug, “I’m a Russian.”

No amount of nervous laughter or made-for-TV one-liners, however, could mask Baiul’s problem, which she finally admitted to last week when she checked into an alcohol-treatment center.

According to Shelly Schultz of the William Morris Agency, which represents Baiul, the rehabilitation program will last about a month. The program marks the first serious treatment Baiul has undergone. Ordered by the court to attend a 10-week alcohol education course, she instead spent one weekend in February at a New Hampshire clinic.

At her court hearing in 1997, Baiul was told by Superior Court Judge Terence Sullivan, “You’re just so incredibly fortunate. I don’t think you realize how serious this could have been. You wouldn’t be standing here asking for admittance to the alcohol-education program. You would be standing here asking me not to send you to prison.”

More than a year later, the message appears to have gotten through to Baiul.

BAILEY-JOHNSON II, ANYONE?

Ted Turner is pushing it, Donovan Bailey is amenable to it, but Michael Johnson is leery of any 150-meter rematch that could be contracted for this summer’s Goodwill Games in New York.

“I get asked about it all the time, but for me it’s a nonissue,” Johnson said last week at a Goodwill Games promotional tour stop in Atlanta.

“Once a race is over, it’s done with, it’s finished. You have to take the bad with the good.”

Johnson’s reticence is understandable. Last year’s split-the-difference “world’s fastest man” sprint-off between the 1996 Olympic 100- and 200-meter gold medalists was a bust for Johnson. He lost, he got hurt and he was derided by Bailey as “chicken” after pulling up lame about 70 meters into the race.

Johnson’s injury was real. His pulled thigh muscle shelved him for most of the summer. Bailey had to apologize to Johnson and deal with the realization that his victory had failed to conclusively resolve the issue.

So Bailey’s agent, Mark Block, says Bailey is up for a rematch--provided the price is right.

Johnson, however, wants no part of another circus act like last year’s runoff in Toronto, which nearly fell apart days before the event and featured a makeshift rubber track laid over Skydome’s concrete floor.

“This thing would have to be done in a first-class manner, it would have to be done right,” Johnson said in Atlanta. “It has to be on a regular track.”

Another catch: In 1998, any match race between Johnson and Bailey could not accurately be billed as a showdown to determine the world’s fastest man. Maurice Greene versus Ato Boldon would qualify, but not Johnson-Bailey, not with Bailey clocking in at 10.13 seconds in a 100-meter race two weeks ago and losing to a Chilean sprinter named Sebastian Keitel.

Goodwill Games organizers are now considering a full-field 150-meter event that would include Greene, the reigning 100-meter world champion, and Boldon, the 1997 200-meter world champion who ran the 100 meters in 9.86 seconds last month at the Mt. SAC Relays--.02 of a second shy of Bailey’s world-record time of 9.84.

KOMEN EYEING MILE RECORD

Kenyan distance runner Daniel Komen has done the two-mile run better than any man before him, and thus has become the first to complete the distance in less than eight minutes.

That’s Roger Bannister time--two sub-four-minute miles, back to back--so Komen is looking for a new challenge, such as the world record in the mile.

“I’m not satisfied with five world records,” Komen recently told Reuters. “I need more, especially in the shorter distances. I think I have the ability to do it.”

He holds world outdoor records at 3,000 and 5,000 meters, and two miles, and in February broke the world indoor records at 3,000 and 5,000 meters. He says he now wants to add the mile and the 1,500 meters to his world-record portfolio.

Komen, who turns 22 on May 17, will take his first crack at the mile record at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, on May 31. The record of 3 minutes 44.39 seconds was set by Algeria’s Noureddine Morceli in 1993.

NO, NO, PRIMO

Primo Nebiolo runs the International Amateur Athletics Federation, which runs international track and field, which will be the showcase attraction at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

So, why shouldn’t Nebiolo be granted his request of almost 20,000 free tickets to the Sydney Games?

Such imperious logic has encountered a brick wall, however. Michael Knight, president of the Sydney organizing committee, told Nebiolo that no freebies would be made available to him or the IAAF.

No surprise, that. Atlanta ’96 organizers turned down a similar request by Nebiolo.

Nebiolo argues that with 200 nations affiliated with the IAAF, it is not unreasonable to ask for “two or three” free tickets for each nation for all 15 track and field sessions during the Olympics.

“We believe that in a stadium of 110,000, there are possibilities to give tickets to the people who are leading the sport,” Nebiolo said.

“I don’t know if the problem can be solved by the organizing committee but I believe we will find a solution. In Atlanta, the IOC gave us $400,000 and we spent the money to buy the majority of the tickets we needed.”