L.A. Meet May Go by the Boards

The plywood track has been slapped onto the floor of the Sports Arena and pieced together for 20 years now, reduced to splinters in some sections, sawdust in others, looking as if it has barely survived the Rabid Woodchuck Relays.

“A really terrible surface,” says Johnny Gray, who has run on the track every year it has served the Los Angeles Invitational indoor track meet. “When I ran on it last year, there were certain spots where I felt as though my foot was going to go through the plywood.”

When Gray emerged from his 800-meter race in 1999 with no broken bones or torn ligaments, he thanked his lucky stars and phoned his sponsor, Home Depot, which is in the plywood business and agreed to donate a few new planks so promoters Al and Don Franken could refurbish the track before the 2000 meet.

According to Al Franken, there was time enough only for “emergency repair” before Saturday’s meet. “We counted enough plywood to really fix the track for next year. This year, all we can do is piecemeal.”

Assuming, of course, there is another L.A. Invitational next year.

The long-embattled meet made it to its 40th anniversary only through the dogged determination of its founder, Al Franken, who has long hoped to one day turn the whole operation over to his son, Don.

This year, the invitational staggered along without a title sponsor, without USA Track and Field affiliation, without television coverage and without any athletes more famous than Gray and U.S. pole vaulter Lawrence Johnson.

And now, the meet finds itself caught in a squeeze play between USATF and Staples Center officials, two groups that have begun talks to host an indoor track meet as early as 2001.

The federation is courting Staples Center largely because it sees the need for a Golden Spike tour stop in Los Angeles, but was deeply disappointed in the performance of the L.A. Invitational last year. Including the meet on its 1999 Golden Spike schedule, USATF provided the event several big-name athletes--including 100-meter world-record holder Maurice Greene--paid their expenses and prize money and booked an hour’s worth of coverage on ESPN.

The broadcast drew a 0.72 rating. The meet, which received little local advance publicity, drew an announced crowd 6,005, although impartial observers placed attendance closer to 4,000. For only the second time in 39 years, the invitational lost money.

USATF not only dropped the invitational from its 2000 Golden Spike calendar, but scheduled a tour stop in Pocatello, Idaho, on the same day as the Los Angeles meet. With USATF support, the Pocatello event was televised (tape-delayed on ESPN2 Sunday) and siphoned off several top athletes.

ON WOBBLY LEGS

The USATF snub has stung the Frankens in more ways than one. When they look at the Golden Spike calendar and see dates at Pocatello and Fayetteville, Ark., they shake their heads incredulously.

“We disagree with their philosophy,” Don Franken says. “We think you have to build the sport in the major markets.”

They also question the notion of holding a track meet inside the spacious and tightly booked Staples Center.

“When are you going to have it?” Al says. “With all the hockey and basketball they have there, where are the open dates? They’re certainly not going to get a choice Saturday.

“A new building would obviously help. But, funny thing about buildings: The Staples Center is nice, but you’re much closer to the action [at the Sports Arena].”

USATF chief executive officer Craig Masback declined to discuss his complaints with the L.A. Invitational on the record, saying only, “This year, we had a choice between an alliance with the L.A. Invitational and an alliance with the Simplot Games [in Pocatello], which is arguably the leading high school track meet in America. For a variety of TV, sponsorship and organizational reasons, we chose this year to go to Idaho.”

Gray, a longtime friend of the Frankens and the L.A. Invitational, sadly reports that “I feel that right now, they’re in trouble. But I would say to them: Don’t die. I don’t think they should roll over.

“Because if they do die, that’s going to hurt track in Southern California.”

Al Franken would prefer to keep the meet afloat. But he’s also a realist.

“Maybe [Masback] should buy this meet, or something like that,” he says. “You’ve got to have Los Angeles. We don’t care who runs it. We just want to see the sport prosper, we don’t care who does it.

“You’ve got to be in L.A. and San Francisco and maybe a spot in Texas. Who the hell is going to cover your meet in Fayetteville or Pocatello?”

More likely than not, by 2001 or 2002, Masback will take Franken up on his offer.

“L.A. is a great market,” Masback says. “L.A. has shown by what Bill Burke has done with the marathon that it will support, on a sponsorship basis, outstanding events in the running category. There are some great entrepreneurs and civic leaders who want track to return to L.A. And the Staples Center represents a state-of-the-art opportunity for doing that.”

SPIKE THAT

While International Olympic Committee members were holed up in Sydney last week, consoling themselves as “victims” in the Olympic bribery mess, another brewing controversy was parked outside on the porch.

Activists for a group calling itself the Bondi Olympic Watch are seeking to halt construction of a temporary 10,000-seat beach volleyball stadium on famed Bondi beach, threatening to lay down in front of the bulldozers if required.

“No stadium will be built at Bondi Beach,” said Lenny Kovner, a spokesman for the group. Kovner said that 860 “Bondi Warriors” already had been enlisted to help prevent construction on the beach.

About 100 protesters gathered last Wednesday outside the Sydney Olympic organizing committee offices while the IOC executive board met inside. One protester wore a Juan Antonio Samaranch mask, deriding the IOC president. Others carried shields that read “greed” and “bribes.”

Will the victimization never end?