Making Tracks

They are the turnstile to the Summer Olympics, the portal through which American track and field athletes must pass on their way to Sydney, the requisite ticket-punch en route to the main event Down Under.

And if that doesn’t register with the run-of-the-sofa television sports consumer, let us try to explain the importance of these U.S. Olympic track and field trials in easier-to-digest terms.

Dodger season is over.

Here come the giants.

No, there won’t be any long ball during this eight-day home stand at Hornet Stadium, give or take the shotput competition. But there will be tape measures and there will be radar-gun speed and, if you’re looking for a season’s worth of pennant pressure crammed into little more than a week, this is the place to be--because the biggest American names in the sport are all here, whether they want to be or not.

See, a large part of the problem with track and field in this country during the down time between Olympic Games is an event known as running and hiding. It involves the biggest talents in the sport spending a goodly portion of four years bobbing and weaving, dodging head-to-head competition whenever and wherever possible, because egos and world rankings and endorsement deals are so easily bruised.

Which is one reason the two marquee names in U.S. men’s sprinting, Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene, have not raced each other, anywhere, in more than two years.

And why the two fastest women in the world, Marion Jones and Inger Miller, have not raced in a 100-meter sprint since last August’s World Championships.

And why casual fans continue to have trouble warming up to a sport that is reduced in non-Olympic years to supremely skilled and conditioned athletes running against . . . a clock.

Well, the dodge days end this afternoon. The Olympic trials, which begin today and run through next weekend, feature 39 events with the same agenda: You must compete and you must finish in the top three if you want to qualify for Sydney.

If you don’t show, you don’t go.

There are no wild cards, no free passes, no injury exemptions. Everyone here--and that includes four-time Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee, bidding for an Olympic berth in the long jump--will have to earn his or her way, which means putting aside vanity for once and putting some carefully preserved reputations on the line.

“This is why we’re out here,” Miller, the reigning women’s world 200-meter champion, said Thursday. “This is why we’re here, to entertain everybody. To compete. . . .

“I don’t think it’s great for the fans to see just one person out there and by himself. I think the competition is what everybody is here to see. To see and wonder: Who’s going to win? And which race?”

So, if form and fitness hold, Jones and Miller will run head to head twice--in the women’s 100-meter final Saturday, then again in the 200 final closing day, July 23. Johnson and Greene, finally, will race in the men’s 200 final, also scheduled for closing day, their first encounter since Greene’s victory in June 1998, at the Prefontaine Classic.

Last year, Johnson and Greene were expected to race twice--at the U.S. Championships and in the first (and only) event of the now-defunct Track and Field Assn. professional circuit. Johnson was a scratch in both, pulling out of the TFA meet because of a death in the family, but raising eyebrows when he withdrew from the nationals claiming a leg injury. Less than a week later, he was running a 400 time of 43.9 seconds in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Then, at the World Championships in Seville, Spain, Greene won the 200 title amid the conspicuous absence of Johnson, the world-record holder in the event. Channeling his energies on a bookend 400-meter world record, Johnson entered only that one event--and eventually succeeded, shattering the 400-meter mark with a time of 43.18.

Johnson versus Greene has become the biggest non-happening in the sport. Their moratorium, now starting its 25th month, has reached such a point that their appearance on the same dais at a premeet interview session Thursday almost constituted news.

The sight of Johnson and Greene seated feet apart, separated only by a chair occupied by Miller, caused one reporter to ask, half-seriously, “When was the last time you were in such close quarters?”

Um, well, Greene mentioned that they both ran last month at Prefontaine. Not in the same event, mind you, but they were in the same stadium.

Give Greene credit: He does what he can to stoke the rivalry, such as it is, trying to provoke Johnson every time he spots a reporter’s note pad.

“This is the race everybody wants to see, I believe,” Greene said later, well outside Johnson’s earshot. “I’m ready to go. I will win.”

Generally speaking, Johnson is not amused. He dismisses Greene’s challenge as if swatting at a horse fly.

“What motivation do I have to beat up on a 19.9 runner?” sniffs Johnson, who set the mark of 19.32 seconds at the Atlanta Olympics.

He also downgrades the talk of a Johnson-Greene rivalry as a media creation.

“Things have to be looked at as what they are,” Johnson said. “I don’t think that it’s any of our responsibility--as athletes or promoters or the media--to try to make something that maybe isn’t. If it’s a good race, it’s a good race. If it’s a great race, it’s a great race.

“But the facts are what they are. Instead of trying to make something that’s going to make people get interested in it just because of what someone said.”

Miller spent most of her time at the dais deflecting questions about any rivalry between herself and Jones--taking great pains not to mention Jones by name. But when the session broke into smaller groups, one persistent questioner pecked away at Miller’s patience.

“No one was making it a rivalry last year,” Miller said tersely. “Then, suddenly, at the worlds, it’s a rivalry.”

Except, the reporter noted, that Jones beat Miller in the 100-meter final in Seville. Miller is 0-7 against Jones at 200 meters, having won the gold medal at the World Championships after Jones injured her back during the semifinals.

“Have you seen her run lately?” Miller shot back. “Why are you asking me this? You want a rivalry? OK, it’s a rivalry.”

And about that world championship 200-meter final?

With or without Jones’ presence, Miller said, “Inger would have beaten her anyway.”

That’s the beauty of the U.S. Olympic trials. Every four years, it comes with the same guarantee: Action as well as words.

Here you have to run, because you can’t hide.

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