No Lack of Motivation to Run With a Fast Crowd

With the Athens Summer Games two years away and the next world championships a year off, U.S. track and field athletes are finding other motivation this summer.

“This is the year to make money,” sprinter Tim Montgomery said. “That’s the only way I can put it. You go out and just run and take the experience from this year to the Olympics.”

He’d like to gain experience at beating Maurice Greene this weekend in Palo Alto, at the U.S. Outdoor Championships. Montgomery and Shawn Crawford, also entered in the 100, have run the 100 meters this season in 9.94 seconds, the world’s fastest time. Greene, the world record holder, made his season debut with a clocking of 9.97 seconds June 10 in Athens.

“We’re going to have one of the greatest 100s ever in the U.S.,” Montgomery said. “You’re going to have six guys in the lineup under 10 seconds.”

The other sub-10 second sprinters in the field are J.J. Johnson (9.95), Coby Miller (9.98) and Brian Lewis (9.99)

Montgomery believes his rivalry with Greene is good for the sport. “I think it’s very important,” he said. “It’s like wrestling. They take certain athletes and make them into stars. In track and field, you’ve got to make yourself a star.”

Greene, who beat Montgomery in the 100 at last year’s world meet, expects the 100 to be the showcase event. “We’re going to give the people here in the United States something to see,” said Greene, who has agreed to participate in USA Track and Field’s Golden Spike Tour through 2004. “They will get a fantastic show.”

That won’t be the only event worth watching as athletes vie for $451,500 in prize money and berths on the U.S. team in September’s World Cup meet in Madrid, Spain.

Marion Jones, seeking her fourth 100 title, ran a world-leading 10.90 seconds at the Prefontaine Classic last month. Angela Williams of USC, the first collegian to win four NCAA 100-meter titles, was third in the 100 last season.

The men’s long jump also could be noteworthy. Defending U.S. champion Savante Stringfellow has the two longest jumps of the season (27 feet 4 inches and 27-10 1/4) and Miguel Pate has the third-longest, 27-2. Pate won the U.S. indoor title with a jump of 28-2 1/4, the longest since Carl Lewis set the world indoor record of 28-10 1/4 in 1984. Dwight Phillips, third at last year’s U.S. outdoor meet, is another top contender.

Splish Splash

Ratko Rudic, coach of the U.S. men’s water polo team, sees one key factor separating U.S. players from their more successful European rivals.

“Physically, U.S. players, especially in the beginning, have the same or better quality as Europeans,” he said. “The problem is they don’t have adequate competition. European players play so many important games.

“Technique and behavior are so important in these kinds of games. We have to build this and create this. We are now in the beginning.”

The first big step for the U.S. team will come when it faces Croatia in the opener of the new FINA World League, next Friday at Los Alamitos. Eight national teams will participate in the inaugural season, with the finals to be held Aug. 1-4 in Athens. The U.S. has been grouped with Croatia, Hungary and Russia.

The league represents a significant part of Rudic’s plan to transform the U.S. into an Olympic and world power. He has seen some progress in slightly more than a year on the job, but the extent will be apparent during World League play and at the World Cup, which will take place in Belgrade in August.

Tony Azevedo of Long Beach and Stanford, one of three Sydney Olympians on the U.S. team, believes the World League will help U.S. players catch up internationally.

“We’ve been so behind for so long,” he said. “Europeans start playing when they’re 8 years old and scrimmage and play games all the time. They play 100 games a year. Here, we swim and lift and play 25 games a year....

“The problem we have is in the fourth quarter, and that’s purely experience. Against Hungary at the World Cup and Olympics, we held our own until the fourth quarter, and that’s experience, veterans knowing how to finish games.”

Castle Up in the Air

The Ice Castle International Training Center in Lake Arrowhead, which has been home to an impressive lineup of skaters and coaches, faces an uncertain future after Carol Probst’s decision to put the facility up for sale.

Probst, who owned and managed it for 20 years with her late husband, Walter, hopes the next owner will maintain it as a skating center.

However, there are no guarantees the 11.4-acre parcel, which is zoned for residential/special use, will be spared the indignity of becoming something else.

Here and There

Olympic figure skating gold medalist Sarah Hughes added stops in Long Beach and Anaheim to her Champions on Ice schedule. Hughes, 17, didn’t commit to the full four-month tour because she wanted to finish school and take a breather after a hectic season. The cast, which includes six-time U.S. champion Michelle Kwan, Olympic silver medalist and world champion Irina Slutskaya, and men’s Olympic medalists Alexei Yagudin, Evgeni Plushenko and Tim Goebel, will perform one show at the Long Beach Arena on July 11 and two at the Arrowhead Pond on July 13.

Five gymnasts who won a combined 40 Olympic medals will be inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame tonight in Oklahoma City. They are Polina Astakhova and Boris Shakhlin of Ukraine, Keiko Ikeda of Japan, Agnes Keleti of Hungary and Daniela Silivas of Romania. Berthe Villancher, a former official, will be inducted posthumously.

Russian pole vaulter Svetlana Feofanova set a European women’s record of 15-7 1/4 (4.76 meters) last weekend in France. That’s the world’s best height for a woman this season.