Track Picks Up the Pace

Contrary to popular opinion, high school mile phenom Alan Webb didn’t spark the resurgence track and field appears to be enjoying in the United States.

“Alan Webb is the bit of good luck that comes along sometimes when you’ve done a lot of other things right,” said Craig Masback, chief executive officer of USA Track and Field.

Webb didn’t compete in any of USATF’s four Golden Spike Tour events, yet all four drew well, Masback said. So did the Penn Relays (110,000 people over three days), the Drake Relays, Millrose Games, Prefontaine Classic and state high school meets around the country.

The USATF’s revenues doubled to $13 million this year, and 18 track and field events will be available on 26 national telecasts this year. Masback has secured a few major sponsors and is pursuing more.

If it’s not quite a golden age for the sport, it is a more promising time than when Masback took over four years ago.

“The organization was virtually bankrupt,” he said during this past week’s U.S. championships at Eugene, Ore. “In 1998 we didn’t know how we were going to keep the doors open. Now, we’ve established a series of track meets, we have great TV coverage, our communications department is up and running and we’re developing a considerable list of sponsors.”

Masback disputes any notion that the sport is in a sorry state.

“I’d get calls from people who’d say, ‘That Alan Webb story is great for such a beleaguered sport.’ I’d tell them our attendance is up throughout the country,” Masback said. “People always said the sport is much more popular in Europe than here and I used to concede that, but I don’t concede that anymore. We’ll probably draw 25,000 here. We actually have more people coming to meets in one country than in all of Europe. Our over-the-air network ratings for track are about a 2. The WNBA is 1.4. NHL hockey is 1.6. Major League Soccer is .8. We’re crushing them.”

Then why does the sport lose so many kids to soccer and basketball? How did its image become tarnished and many of its elite athletes come to be looked on as arrogant, spoiled brats?

“It’s perception, and we just have to work on that,” Masback said. “Maybe we’re not telling the story well enough.”

Although some athletes already know how to tell it.

Marion Jones, who isolated herself--largely by necessity--before the Sydney Games, now signs autographs after she competes. Pole vaulter Stacy Dragila willingly conducts clinics for kids.

“Some of [the athletes] were more remote last year, but they listen,” Masback said. “When you tell them the women’s [World Cup] soccer team stayed after games and signed autographs, they listen.

“We need big stars who people sense are accessible. We need sponsors so we can have big-time track shows. We need to behave like a mature, big-time sport. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Alan Webb closes the loop on it.”

But there are some limits on what Masback is willing to do to promote the sport.

When the network morning shows clamored for Webb after his record-breaking mile, he made the TV rounds. But when CBS asked USATF to change the 1,500 from Saturday to today, Masback refused.

“That was not an athlete-friendly thing to do,” he said.

However, the race was moved up about 90 minutes so ESPN could air it live on “SportsCenter.”

Said Masback: “Those are hard decisions to make.”

Webb finished fifth with a time of 3 minutes 38.50 seconds and didn’t qualify for the world championships, which will be in Edmonton, Canada, in August.

Fresh off successes in Northern California, Masback said he’s also in conversations to stage a major meet in Los Angeles. He acknowledged disappointment that a misunderstanding between organizers and sponsors led to the cancellation of the Powerade Indoor meet at Staples Center in January.

“We’ve had a very careful plan for the Bay Area to rejuvenate what had been a great place for us in track and field history, and it’s safe to say we achieved that,” he said. “L.A. needs to be the next place. If anything, L.A. is greater. You need the right facility, right partners and right events.”

Taking a Pole

Sydney pole vault silver medalist Lawrence Johnson, who will defend his U.S. title today, credits HSI track club coach John Smith with enhancing his speed and control on the runway. Those improvements allow him to use longer and stiffer poles and, he believes, will improve his chances of matching the world record of 20 feet 1 3/4 inches (6.14 meters) set by Sergei Bubka in 1994. Johnson’s personal best is 19-7 1/2.

“When that record falls, it’s going to really change the sport,” said Johnson, who commutes from his Tennessee home to UCLA to train with Smith. “There are very few vaulters chasing that. A lot of us look up to Bubka as the greatest of all time. He’s a god.”

Being injury-free and having extra speed might lead Johnson to again take up the decathlon, in which he competed in college. First, he’d like to get the No. 1 ranking in the U.S., ahead of Nick Hysong--the surprise winner at Sydney--and Jeff Hartwig.

“This year I have one final thing I need to prove to myself in the pole vault and I’m very close to that,” Johnson said. “Since the Olympic trials in ‘96, there have been 10 U.S. championships in the pole vault and I’ve won six. In the others, I was injured and didn’t attend or injured and attended. I’m definitely looking for new ways to challenge myself.”

See Marion Run

Jones, who will seek her fourth consecutive U.S. 200-meter title today, will run the 100 Friday at the Golden Gala in Rome, her first venture to Europe of the outdoor season. She hasn’t decided how many events she will run at the world championships, but she previously decided to skip the long jump this season, so she won’t repeat her Sydney five-medal haul.

“I know I’ll be running the 100, and hopefully, this weekend will determine the 200,” said Jones, who won her heat Saturday with a time of 22.23 seconds, the fastest in the world this year. “I probably will be in one of the relays. It’s in the hands of the U.S. coaches.

“I’ve fallen in love with the 4 by [400]. In terms of the 4 by [100] we’ll have to wait and see what kind of team we have. I’ll do whatever is needed.”

But don’t look for her in anything longer than the 200.

“I have no desire to run the 400 in open competition,” she said. “I’ve seen the way quarter-milers have to train, and I want no part of that.”

West Might be Best

World pair figure skating champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada shocked the skating world last week by moving their training base from Montreal to Edmonton. They also switched coaches, from Richard Gauthier to Jan Ullmark, who coached Sale with her previous partner and when she skated solo.

It’s surprising when so successful a pair makes so big a move: Sale and Pelletier won six of seven competitions they entered last season and were second in the other event, the Trophee Lalique. To switch so soon before the Olympics is unusual too. Sale and Pelletier, a dramatic and expressive duo, will contend for gold at Salt Lake City-- but Sale has a history of missing her part on side-by-side jumps. If she feels more comfortable working with Ullmark and fellow coach David Howe--who is considered a strong technician--the psychological benefits could make a difference.

“We felt we needed a change,” Pelletier said.

Sale and Pelletier maintained their relationship with choreographer Lori Nichol, who until recently choreographed programs for four-time world women’s champion Michelle Kwan and still works with U.S. men’s champion Tim Goebel.

Here and There

The GymJam men’s national qualifier gymnastics competition will be held Saturday at UC Santa Barbara’s Robertson Gym. It’s the selection event for the U.S. championships, to be held in Philadelphia Aug. 8-11. The U.S. competition will be the qualifying event for the world championships, Oct. 28-Nov. 4 in Ghent, Belgium.

U.S. Olympians Paul and Morgan Hamm are among the elite gymnasts who have committed to compete in the Goodwill Games in late August and early September in Brisbane, Australia. Andreea Raducan of Romania, who was stripped of her all-around medal at the Sydney Olympics after testing positive for a banned drug, and Svetlana Khorkina of Russia, who won a gold and two silvers, also will compete.

Jackie Berube of Escanaba, Mich., broke the U.S. record in the clean-and-jerk weightlifting event for the 127.9-pound weight class with a lift of 249.1 pounds. That helped Berube, a former world-class wrestler, win a spot on the U.S. weightlifting team at the world championships in October in Guam. Also on the U.S. team for the world competition are Sydney Olympians Cheryl Haworth, Tara Nott, Robin Goad, Suzanne Leathers, Shane Harmon and Oscar Chaplin III.

The former coach of Finland’s national cross-country ski team was arrested on suspicion of smuggling drugs. Kari-Pekka Kyro had been fired after being involved in a drug scandal at the world cross-country championships in February. Six Finns failed drug tests and they forfeited four medals.

Only 229 days until the Salt Lake City Winter Games.