Jumping to the Wrong Conclusions

John Rocker probably isn’t given to many moments of quiet introspection, just to take a wild stab, so we’d better think this one through for him.

John, you should have been an Australian long jumper.

On the Australian Olympic track team, racial slurs are not verbal hand grenades lobbed into a multi-ethnic locker room--they’re grist for loads of good-old-boy humor.

On the Australian Olympic track team, PC is something you turn on to read your e-mail.

Last week, an Australian long jumper named Jai Taurima insulted African-American rivals Melvin Lister and Savante Stringfellow by dismissing their Olympic chances because “you can pretty much knock out all the dark guys” because of the cold weather expected in Sydney later this month.

“We jumped in Salamanca [Spain] a month ago,” Taurima said, “and those guys just couldn’t compete well in bad conditions. It was wet and cold.”

Taurima also called the U.S. long jumpers “a bunch of dribblers,” which is derogatory Aussie slang that has nothing to do with basketball skills, and scoffed, “Americans are Americans, aren’t they? They only jump big in America.”

Not surprisingly, Lister and Stringfellow were incensed. Stringfellow said he would rank Taurima’s words “the same as the John Rocker comments,” alluding to the Atlanta Brave reliever’s infamous insult-every-demographic-group-available interview with Sports Illustrated last year.

With one difference.

Rocker doesn’t have teammates like Taurima’s.

Steve Moneghetti and Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, captains of the Australian track team, not only said they weren’t offended by Taurima’s comments, they wrote the whole incident off as a bit of a laugh.

“I don’t see that as a problem,” Moneghetti, a marathon runner, told reporters in Brisbane. “He spoke his mind, he says what he thinks. If that’s what he thinks, I support that. It’s not like I’m going to go over and rap him on the knuckles and say that was ridiculous, because that’s not the way we operate.”

Then Moneghetti, ever the humorist, quipped, “We’re disappointed as team leaders we didn’t think it up.”

To which Gainsford-Taylor jokingly added, “We’re working on it right now.”

Taurima, to his credit, did apologize for his remarks, as did John Coates, the president of the Australian Olympic Committee, who dispatched a representative to the U.S. training site to issue an apology to the American team.

Coates said Taurima’s comments “are at odds with the team values to which all our Olympians aspire. We should respect our competitors. There should be no racial jokes. I intend to talk to Jai to remind him that this is the basis of which our team is going to compete.”

Olympic sensitivity training?

If that’s the assignment, Coates had best not stop with Taurima. With this team, he’d do well to take it from the top.

THEY’RE JUMPING . . . WELL . . . HOPPING MAD

Stringfellow said he could not accept Taurima’s apology, saying, “If he didn’t mean it, why did he say it? We never cross the line and say anything personal.”

Added Lister: “When a guy says something like that, 95% of the time he means it. You can talk all the trash you want, but racial comments will never come out of my mouth.”

Taurima said he was simply trying to stir up some attention for the Olympic long jump competition--mission accomplished--and maybe pump up his Aussie teammates before the Games.

One residual effect he probably hadn’t thought of: Taurima just lit a fire under the feet of the American long jumpers, who had displayed conclusively at July’s U.S. trials that the rest of the world need not lose any sleep over them. Lister was the only jumper to clear 27 feet at the trials and his winning leap of 27-3 3/4 was the shortest at the trials in 20 years.

There didn’t appear to be a medal contender in the group, but now?

“This is my official invitation to the Olympic Games,” Stringfellow declared.

Said Lister: “It’s a proven fact that we Americans have come overseas and jumped well.”

Well, yes, they have, so long as they were named Carl Lewis and Mike Powell.

Lister and Stringfellow? However far they jump in Sydney really doesn’t matter, in gold-medal terms. That prize should belong to Cuba’s three-time world champion Ivan Pedroso, the world leader at 28-4 1/2.

And Taurima?

“Who is he anyhow?” Lister said.

“I’ve never heard of a good Australian long jumper. The only long jumper you can talk to me about is Ivan Pedroso.”

THESE TADPOLES TODAY

Of course, the best way to knock back insolence is the Penny Heyns way--keep competing long enough and well enough so that all brash talk from wannabe rivals is promptly rendered meaningless.

After winning the women’s 100-meter breaststroke final at last month’s U.S. swim trials, an over-excited Megan Quann pronounced that Heyns, the world-record holder from South Africa, is “going down. She’s 26 or 27, I’m 16. She’s got a lot ahead of her. I’m just going to race my heart out and win that gold.”

Heyns, who owns seven of the 10 fastest times recorded in the event, including the top six, says she has heard it all before.

“Megan is having plenty to say,” Heyns told the Sydney Morning Herald. “I can’t control what she says or does.

“These young ones that come through, you see them once and never hear from them again.”

ARMSTRONG, BODY BRUISED

Lance Armstrong overcame cancer to win two Tour de France championships, so did you think getting hit by a car was going to stymie him in his quest for an Olympic gold medal?

Armstrong said he’d have to cancel a couple of days’ training after being struck by car on a training ride Tuesday near his home in Nice, France. Armstrong was descending a mountain road when a car suddenly appeared from behind a hairpin turn and hit him head-on, sending Armstrong flying.

Fortunately for Armstrong, his bike took the brunt of the collision. Armstrong was examined at a nearby hospital, where X-rays of his back and neck proved negative.

“There is nothing broken or serious,” Armstrong wrote on his Web site, www.lancearmstrong.com. “I had a helmet on, so we’re safe there, but I’m off the bike for two days or so.”

Armstrong is entered in two Olympic events, the road race and the time trial. He plans to ride in one more preparatory race, the Grand Prix des Nations, before traveling to Sydney by the middle of the month.

WHOA, CANADA

Canada’s days as Olympic sprint king are dwindling to a scant few.

In Atlanta in 1996, Canadian men swept the 100-meter sprint and 400-meter relay championships, with Donovan Bailey claiming the 100-meter gold medal in a then-world record time of 9.84 seconds.

But if the last batch of pre-Olympic tuneups in Europe are any indication, Canada is about to vacate both titles in Sydney.

Sandwiched around one soggy 10.24 finish on a wet track in Gateshead, England, American Maurice Greene ran the two fastest times of the year--first 9.88 in Belgium, then 9.86 Friday in Berlin. In England, Greene also anchored a U.S. 400-meter relay team to victory in 37.95 seconds, also the world’s best mark this year.

Bailey ran against Greene in England, laboring to finish eighth at 10.46, and again in Berlin. There, Bailey improved slightly, running 10.20 and placing sixth--behind five Americans: Greene, Jon Drummond (9.96), Tim Montgomery (10.01), Bernard Williams (10.05) and Brian Lewis (10.13).

At the same time, Canada’s 1999 world silver medalist Bruny Surin withdrew from his last two pre-Olympic competitions, including the Berlin meet, to rest a sore left hamstring. Thus, Surin will arrive in Sydney without having run under 10 seconds in 2000. His best time this year is 10.08.