Sprinter Dennis Mitchell’s suggestion that the United States have a permanent relay coach and, perhaps, a permanent 4 x 100-meter relay team for several years likely would meet fierce opposition from the college coaches who view world and Olympic team assignments as political plums to be passed around.
It also would require overhauling the system that bases relay selection on results from the U.S. Championships.
Yet it is an idea whose time may have come–U.S. men’s sprint relays have failed to make the final in three of the last seven major championships (Olympics and worlds) because of botched baton passes. It happened again Saturday in the first round of the sixth World Track & Field Championships.
Consider Canada’s approach and results: Over the past four years, only five men have run on its sprint relay. The same four have run the final of the last two worlds and the 1996 Olympics, with the fifth running an opening-round heat. Canada has won all three events, while the U.S. was second once (1996 Olympics) and out of the running twice.
This once was a race entirely dominated by the U.S. From 1920 through 1993, U.S. sprint relays finished first in 18 of 20 Olympics and worlds, missing gold only when baton screwups kept them from the final (1960 and 1988 Olympics).
As worldwide competition gets better, the margin for error gets smaller. One messy pass, let alone a botched one, is enough to decide a race.
Until the 1980s, when track and field became a professional, money-making sport, the U.S. could get its relay teams together for pre-Olympic practice. Now that agents and shoe companies have taken over the sport from once-powerful national federations, athletes increasingly go their own way until they arrive at a major meet.
Keeping one group of relay runners together could, over a few seasons, provide the familiarity that leads to synchronized baton passes. It clearly is something that should be tried.
Olympian letdown: Of the 26 Olympic champions who competed at the 1997 track worlds, just 10 won medals–seven gold and three silver. More typical were performances like those of U.S. Olympic champions Charles Austin (high jump), Randy Barnes (shot put) and Derrick Adkins (400 hurdles), who failed to make the final of their events in Athens.
Those numbers show a considerably greater drop than the one in 1993, the first world meet to be held in the year after an Olympics. Of the 28 Olympic champions from 1992 who competed in the 1993 worlds, 18 won medals, including 10 gold.
The 1997 worlds were the first in which no world records were set or tied. In 1993, four world records were set and one tied.
Three world records were set Wednesday in the Weltklasse Grand Prix meet in Zurich, called the one-day world championships. All three came in men’s races of 800 meters or more, which require energy-sapping rounds in the world meet.
Swiss Ms.: World 100-meter champion Marion Jones of the U.S. may have lost that race to Merlene Ottey of Jamaica (10.96 to 10.97) in the Weltklasse, but Jones still was the most impressive sprinter in the meet.
In the 200 two hours later, Jones won with a time of 21.76 into a slight headwind (1.79 miles per hour). It was the fastest women’s 200 since 1992 and made Jones, 21, the 10th fastest woman at the distance.
The other U.S. highlight in Zurich came in the 800 meters, where Jearl Miles-Clark (1:56.93) missed the U.S. record by .03 while finishing fourth. Maria Mutola of Mozambique won the race in 1:56.36.
Miles-Clark, third in the 400 at the worlds, clearly has a future in the 800, which she has run only occasionally. Her time Wednesday was best by a U.S. runner since Kim Gallagher’s 1:56.91 in 1988. The record, 1:56.90, was set by Mary Slaney in 1985.
Globetrotting: Bill Bishop, 19, a three-time state champion at Barrington High School and sophomore at the University of Minnesota, swims the 400-meter individual medley at the World University Games beginning Aug. 21 in Sicily.
Chicago canoeist Zbigniew Wadyzinski made the U.S. team for next week’s world championships in Nova Scotia by winning the 1000-meter title and finishing second in the 200 at the recent U.S. Championships.
Oops: Monday’s story about Sergey Bubka’s sixth straight world title in the pole vault said he had twice as many such crowns in a single event as anyone else. In the excitement of watching Bubka, we overlooked Germany’s Lars Riedel winning a fourth straight discus title shortly before the pole vault ended.
Maurice Greene, the world 100-meter champion, has run the race in 9.90 or better five times this year. Carl Lewis, the two-time Olympic champion and three-time world champion in the 100, bettered 9.92 just once in his career.
Lewis was quoted Tuesday saying he would have nothing to do with the U.S. track federation, even though USATF has a new executive director. Such a petty attitude is among the reasons Lewis will never be appreciated in the U.S. the way he might have been.
The International Olympic Committee expects no more than six bids for the 2006 Winter Olympics. The likely candidates are Sion, Switzerland; Innsbruck, Austria; Tatry-Poprad, Slovakia; Jaca, Spain; a combined Finland-Sweden bid; and a combined Austria-Italy-Slovenia bid.
