A Long Day for Jones, May

For U.S. track and field fans, there is normally a letdown after the 100 meters in a major championship. Marion Jones, who won that title here Sunday, guaranteed that wouldn’t occur for at least another 24 hours by returning to Estadio Olimpico on Monday for the long jump final, the second of the four events she has entered in the World Championships.

She did not, however, guarantee victories in all of them, and her third-place finish, while ending her quest for an unprecedented four gold medals, was not much of a surprise, or a disappointment.

She jumped 22 feet 5 inches, her second-best effort of the season but still well short of the 23-11 3/4 she achieved when ranked first in the world last year.

It is clear she needs more work in her least-practiced event. Although she appears to have finally mastered her takeoff, she continues to have serious problems with her landing. In other words, you still don’t want her piloting your plane.

But that was far from the most intriguing story in the women’s long jump.

A Spaniard by way of Cuba, Niurka Montalvo, was awarded first place even though it seemed apparent on television replays that she fouled on her sixth and final jump, the 23-2 leap that proved the winner.

That eclipsed the 22-9 1/4 of second-place Fiona May, a citizen of the world who has Jamaican parents, was born in Britain, married an American-born Italian and competes for Italy.

The Italian federation filed a protest on May’s behalf. But the International Amateur Athletic Federation upheld the decision of the Spanish long-jump judge, whose non-call presumably wasn’t affected by the crowd chanting, “Ole!” after Montalvo’s questionable jump.

For May, it brought back bad memories of the 1997 World Championships in Athens, where she finished third. Trying to move ahead of the second-place Greek on her final jump, she was jeered by the crowd as she sped down the runway and then charged with a foul she didn’t believe she committed by--you guessed it--a Greek judge.

“I can’t believe this happened again,” said May, spewing venom through her tears.

That proves she’s not a student of long-jump history. The episode Monday night was remarkably similar to the men’s final in the 1987 World Championships in Rome, where an Italian, Giovanni Evangelisti, was credited with a few tiny centimeters more on his last jump so that he would finish third, ahead of American Larry Myricks.

That turned into track and field’s Watergate as the Italian press investigated for six months, eventually determining that the fix was orchestrated by the right-hand man of Primo Nebiolo, the president of the Italian track and field federation and the IAAF.

The underling was dismissed, Myricks was awarded the bronze medal and the scandal merely grazed Nebiolo, who last week was elected without opposition to his fifth term as IAAF president.

“I was on the other side of the stadium,” Nebiolo said in an interview which, coincidentally, occurred only minutes before the start of the most recent long-jump snafu. “How could I have orchestrated anything?”

It’s too bad that Nebiolo wasn’t in charge Monday night because May obviously needed an ally in high places. But he had the same problem as in ’87. He was on the far side of the stadium, without even a clear view of the competition because of the advertising signboards he authorized in front of the runway.

He left in search of a seat that would afford him a view of four closed-circuit television screens so that he could watch all of the action inside the stadium at the same time.

He should have tried a sports bar in downtown Seville, where he could also have enjoyed tapas and cold cerveza on another night when the temperature hit the 90s.

Maybe that’s where this city’s track and field fans were. The attendance, 37,815, again disappointed organizers, who announced that admission to all morning sessions from here on will be free.

Or it could be that the fans merely weren’t interested in Monday night’s card. Except for Jones, there were no marquee names involved in finals.

That wouldn’t have been the case if Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor, the only high jumper who has cleared eight feet, had been here. But he tested positive for cocaine last month at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Canada. When his first appeal to the IAAF was denied, he decided to have back surgery before pursuing his case further.

The Cuban government’s claim that Sotomayor’s urine sample was tampered with, perhaps at the instigation of the CIA, hasn’t convinced many. In his absence, Russia’s Vyacheslav Voronin won.

Kenyan Christopher Koskei won with such ease in the 3,000-meter steeplechase that it gave credence to the charge that he allowed a compatriot, Bernard Barmasai, to beat him last week in Zurich. That enabled Barmasai to remain undefeated in the seven-meet Golden League circuit and in the running for a substantial bonus.

Germany’s Franka Dietzsch won the women’s discus with a throw of 223-7. Notable was the sixth-place finish of UCLA’s Seilala Sua, the best for a U.S. woman in the World Championships. At 21, she is four years younger than the next youngest competitor here and 10 years younger than the winner.

That made UCLA Coach Art Venegas feel better after another of his athletes, former Bruin John Godina, failed over the weekend to defend his shotput title with a seventh-place finish and failed to qualify in the discus.

The only American here who feels he achieved less is former USC Trojan Mark Crear, one of the favorites in the 110 hurdles who didn’t get past Monday night’s second round when he was disqualified for two false starts. The United States’ appeal, on the ground that the timer malfunctioned, was rejected.

That’s all that happened Monday night. Perhaps the crowd will be larger tonight, when a couple of Spanish favorites, Fermin Cacho and Reyes Estevez, challenge Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj in the 1,500.

Spanish fans have developed the attention span for that distance, probably because of their traditionally dismal performances in the sprints.

If that would-be luggage thief who was run down by Maurice Greene at the airport last week had escaped, Spanish authorities would have tried their best to apprehend him--so that they could give him a singlet and enter him in the 100.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.