Guevara Is Music to Track Fans’ Ears

I went to a track meet Sunday and a Luis Miguel concert broke out.

Or at least it seemed like one 10 minutes before the women’s 400 meters when Mexico’s newest pop idol, Ana Guevara, appeared to warm up on the track at the Home Depot Center in Carson. Many among the crowd waved Mexican flags and chanted, “Ana, Ana, Ana,” and “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico.”

“When you see this many Mexican flags and it’s not for soccer or boxing, you know it’s a big deal,” said Rigoberto Cervantes, the former La Opinion sportswriter who has observed Mexican athletes in Southern California for many years.

He said he had seen only three athletes generate the kind of excitement among Mexican-American sports fans in Los Angeles before Sunday -- baseball’s Fernando Valenzuela, soccer’s Hugo Sanchez and boxing’s Julio Cesar Chavez. More people might have come out to see them, but there were only 10,094 tickets available for the inaugural event at the sports complex.

Once word spread in the Latino community that Guevara was in the field, meet officials for the Home Depot Track and Field Invitational reported that remaining tickets went fast and, in a first for the sport here since the 1984 Summer Olympics, scalpers were doing a brisk business outside the gates as Guevara confirmed her status as Mexico’s first track star. The country has produced competitive race walkers and distance runners, but never has it had a sprinter like her.

She did not disappoint Sunday. She is not as elegant as some quarter-milers, running with her shoulders hunched forward and her head down as if straining to coax every bit of strength from her muscles. But she is not being graded for style.

Although all of the runners battled a stiff crosswind for the first half of the race, Guevara was the only one strong enough to maintain her form. By the end, all except her were spent. She won easily in 49.62 seconds, the second-fastest time in the world this year, and kissed the ground at the finish line.

“L.A. seemed like my hometown in Mexico today,” said Guevara, who is from Nogales, before four security guards and her “Team Guevara” entourage steered her toward hundreds of Mexican fans waiting for her to sign autographs.

One held a sign that read, “Tu Eres Mi Diosa de Oro.”

You Are My Goddess of Gold.

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There is little doubt gold will be her color over the next 15 months. With Cathy Freeman probably beyond her peak, Guevara is dominant in the 400. She hasn’t lost since a third-place finish in the 2001 world championships in Edmonton and is the prohibitive favorite to win this year’s world championships in Paris. She seems to have a clear path to the finish line in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Track experts say the most compelling women’s race between now and then would be Guevara vs. Marion Jones at 300 meters.

It couldn’t happen this season because Jones is expecting her first child in July.

But Scott Davis, Mt. San Antonio College Relays director, is already talking about trying to match them at that distance at his meet next spring in Walnut. The 300 isn’t run often in meets, but Jones ran one at Mt. SAC two years ago and almost broke the world record. Guevara did break it in Mexico City last month.

“I’d be interested in seeing them at 300 meters because I think it’d be a great race,” said John Smith, a former outstanding 400 runner who coached Lewis and Quincy Watts to Olympic gold medals at that distance. “But what I’d really be interested in seeing is them at 400 meters. They’d both run 48 and change.”

Jones is trying to repeat in 2004 as Olympic champion in the 100 and 200, but many within the sport believe her best event would be the 400 and have encouraged her to pursue it beginning in 2005.

“Can you imagine a 400 here between Marion and Ana?” Smith said. “They’d sell out the Coliseum.”

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Except that the Coliseum doesn’t have a track anymore.

Al Davis insisted on its removal to create better sight lines for football fans, then moved his team.

As bitter as track fans remain about that, the fact is that there aren’t enough people here who want to see a meet to fill the Coliseum and probably never will be, unless there is another Olympics there.

But Sunday’s meet, one stop on the USA Track and Field’s Golden Spike Tour, proves that Southern California still has a thriving track community -- with potential for growth unparalleled in the United States.

The television rating in Los Angeles for last week’s tape-delayed Prefontaine Classic almost doubled the national rating and had more viewers here than NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600. Speculation is that the rating was largely Guevara-driven.

No wonder Home Depot meet promoters decided months ago to drop another event so that the women’s 400 could be included. Guevara agreed to come for far less money than she commands in Europe, but promoters, while not being specific, said they paid her a significant amount relative to their $103,000 budget. It was a bargain in every sense of the word.

“This reminds me of Fernandomania,” said Jose Alvarado of Commerce, who, like most Mexican Americans in the crowd, was attending his first track meet.

Like many of them, he brought a child, in his case 3-year-old daughter Jocelyn.

“We’ll be back. Ana is going to inspire a whole generation of runners in Mexico. That will be her legacy.”

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Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.