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 Inside the Olympic Sports
Posted: Tuesday April 20, 1999 05:38 PM Men's Sprinting Top marathoners were out in force in London, Rotterdam and Boston By Tim Layden
April once belonged to the Boston Marathon, a New England rite of spring with a long and colorful list of characters and traditions. Boston is home to Johnny Kelley and Heartbreak Hill, Bill Rodgers and Joan Benoit Samuelson. It remains the most treasured marathon in the world. However, it no longer has exclusive rights to its own month. The third weekend in April has become an annual feast of marathoning, in which Boston is the last (by virtue of its Monday Patriots Day start), but no longer the main, course. The Rotterdam and London marathons are run the day before Boston, and each has established itself as a premier event in the ever-faster world of elite marathoning. Rotterdam's tabletop-flat course annually imperils world bests, while London's roughly $3.3 million budget enables it to assemble the most glamorous field of any major marathon in the world.
Thus it was no surprise that last weekend produced another batch of fast times, terrific racing and even a record-keeping controversy. In Rotterdam, Loroupe was close to record pace at the halfway point, but slowed while running virtually alone to win in 2:22:50. In London, Joyce Chepchumba, also of Kenya, won the women's division in 2:23:22. Though her time was 32 seconds slower than Loroupe's in Rotterdam -- and 2:35 off Loroupe's world best -- Chepchumba was awarded a $125,000 bonus from London organizers for setting a world record. Confused? Welcome to the arcane world of women's road racing. It has been argued that Loroupe was paced by male runners in her 1998 Rotterdam run, and that most fast women's times are aided by having men in the race. For that reason London organizers -- who start their women's race 25 minutes before the men's -- declared that the true women's world record was the fastest time ever run in an all-woman marathon: a 2:23:24 turned in by Lidia Simon of Romania at the Osaka women's marathon in January. Chepchumba ran two seconds faster. The London men's winner squandered his chance to cash in on a record. After holding off two-time winner Antonio Pinto of Portugal, Abdelkader El Mouaziz of Morocco waltzed across the finish line in 2:07:57, waving to spectators and easily losing the two seconds by which he missed Pinto's course record and a $25,000 bonus. In Rotterdam, Japhet Kosgei of Kenya became the seventh-fastest marathoner in history with a victory in 2:07:11. In a race designed for fast times, five men broke 2:08. A day later Kosgei's countryman Joseph Chebet won in Boston -- the race's ninth straight Kenyan champion -- in 2:09:52. Fatuma Roba of Ethiopia took her third women's title in 2:23:25. Intriguing times lie ahead for the marathon. Loroupe's performances have made it plain that women will soon be breaking 2:20. Among the men, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who holds the world records in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters and is arguably the greatest talent in distance running history, has said he will turn to the marathon after the 2000 Olympics. With that promise, he casts a giant shadow over the event, no small feat for a man barely more than five feet tall.
Mt. SAC Relays: Wanted: Competition for Marion Jones. As track's new superstar steamrollered through a spectacular 1998, winning 35 of 36 finals (19 in the 100 meters, six in the 200, one in the 400 and nine in the long jump, in which she lost in the last meet of the season to German veteran Heike Drechsler), the sight of her winning by comical margins became commonplace. Jones threatened the 100- and 200-meter world records set by the late Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988, as well as the world long jump record of Galina Chistyakova of the Soviet Union, all without company. It is staggering to think what she could accomplish with someone pushing her. Part of the problem is of her own making: She's too good. Part is not. Minutes before the start of the women's 400 meters at last Saturday's Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, Calif., meet director Scott Davis lamented, "I've had the field filled three times, and people keep scratching on me. Nobody wants to run against Marion." Jones was left to run virtually unchallenged in a field of five and cruised to an easy victory in 50.79. "The goal was to run sub-50," Jones said after the race. "But I was expecting a little stronger field." Track has long suffered from the unwillingness of its stars to compete head-to-head. British middle-distance runners Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett ducked each other shamelessly in the late '70s and early '80s. Sprinters Carl Lewis of the U.S. and Linford Christie of Great Britain did likewise in the early '90s. Jones's talent makes her nearly unbeatable when she's sharp. Still, it is up to other athletes to take on the challenge. U.S. sprinter Gail Devers is healthy. France's Marie-Jose Perec, who won the 200 and the 400 at the Atlanta Olympics, is training hard again after two years of injuries. Shame on them both if they don't seize every opportunity to face Jones.
Men's Sprinting: A year ago training partners Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Maurice Greene of the U.S. began boasting in March of their planned assault on Donovan Bailey's 100-meter world record of 9.84 seconds, set in the Atlanta Olympics final, calling the mark "soft." Between them, they ran 16 legal sub-10s in 1998, but neither got the record. This year both will chase the 100-meter world championship at Seville in August, but there will be no talk of the record. "We're not banging our head against that wall this year," Boldon says. Well, maybe they'll bang it a little. Both plan to run the 100 at the May 6 Modesto Relays, where organizers have put up a $200,000 world-record bonus. Issue date: April 26, 1999
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