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Inside Olympic Sports
Gymnastics Comebacks | The Kim and Poe Show Here's what to expect from the crucible of track and field's U.S. trials By Tim Layden If the Olympics are the greatest track meet in the world, then the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials, which begin on Friday in Sacramento and run through July 23, are surely the most excruciating. There are no wild cards, no byes and no selection committees, just three spots up for grabs in each event -- four years of preparation coming down to a single moment. Here are six key questions that will be answered over the eight days of competition: Will Gail Devers earn a shot at an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic 100-meter gold medal? It doesn't look good. Devers's sprint form has been abysmal; her season's best is 11.20 seconds, making her only the 11th-fastest U.S. woman of 2000. That's the bad news for Devers. The good news is that she has never looked better over hurdles so early in a season. She has already run 12.47 in the 100-meter hurdles, the fastest clocking in the world this year and her second-fastest in a career that includes three world titles in that event. Count on Devers to double in the 100 and the hurdles at the trials, but count on her to make the team only in the hurdles. She'll go to Sydney as the favorite in an event she should have won eight years ago in Barcelona, where she fell and finished fifth. Is Jackie Joyner-Kersee serious about competing in the long jump? Maybe. Her agent, former world champion hurdler Greg Foster, said last week, "I know she's had some injuries, but I also know she's a got a plane ticket to Sacramento on July 13." Know this: The women's long jump has never been softer. A jump in the low-to-mid-21-foot range could secure a ticket to Sydney. In her prime Joyner-Kersee jumped consistently in the high 23s, but her best in 1998, her last year on the circuit, was only 21' 5 1/4". She's 38 and was thrilled to get out of the game two years ago, weary and sore. It will probably take 23 feet to win a medal in September, which makes it hard to imagine why JJK would risk a smudged legacy merely to march in one more opening ceremony. What happened to John Godina? Five years ago, at age 23, Godina was world champion in the shot put. A year later he took silver in Atlanta. In 1998 he had 13 of the 14 longest throws in the world, as well as the best throw in the discus. He seemed to have a good chance of becoming the first shot-discus double Olympic gold medalist since 1924. Then, after winning the national shot title in '99 and finishing second in the discus, Godina bombed at the worlds in Seville. He hasn't been the same since. C.J. Hunter, Marion Jones's husband, has dominated the shot, followed by a host of solid throwers. Four U.S. men have bettered Godina's 2000 best of 69' 8 3/4", led by Hunter, who has tossed a PR of 71' 8 3/4". Yet don't count Godina out, says his coach, Art Venegas. "John broke down mentally last year," says Venegas, who is also UCLA's throws coach. "He was on top for so long that he lost his drive. I can see him coming back. Rest and failure, that's a pretty good motivational combination." What's up with the best male U.S. distance runners? Two-time Olympian Bob Kennedy, the U.S. record holder at 3,000 and 5,000 meters and the sixth-place finisher in the 1996 5,000, is recovering from a back injury suffered when his car was rear-ended in early May. He had planned to run the 10,000 in Sacramento and Sydney, but the interruption in training has left him uncertain. "I've been to the Olympics twice, so I'm not interested in going just for the experience," Kennedy said last week. "If I'm not sure I can be competitive in a 10,000, I won't run it." Kennedy might keep his options open by doubling in the 5 and 10 at the trials. "I missed training time," he said, "but I'm still doing workouts that not many other Americans are doing." Adam Goucher, who beat Kennedy for the U.S. 5,000 title last summer, is in worse straits. After missing nine weeks in the spring with a strained left Achilles tendon, Goucher resumed training in May, only to hurt his back three weeks ago while working in his yard. He missed a crucial nine days of training. "When he got hurt the second time, he was at rock bottom," says Goucher's coach, Mark Wetmore. "But he'll be at the trials, and if anybody can pull it off, he can." If Marion Jones wants five gold medals so badly, why doesn't she qualify in the 400 meters, in addition to the 100 and 200 (and two relays), and bag the long jump, in which she has struggled? Can't do it. True, Mrs. Jones's 400 clocking of 49.59 at Mt. SAC in April is still the world's second-fastest time of 2000, and her long-jumping is wildly unpredictable, but the schedule won't allow a sprint triple. In Sacramento the 100 and 400 semifinals are 80 minutes apart, followed 33 minutes later by the 100 final. Besides, it takes only one big pop to win a long jump, and MJ certainly has a puncher's chance. Which new names will we be hearing a lot in Sydney? Not counting the boycotted 1984 Olympics, the U.S. hasn't won a medal in a women's throwing event since Kate Schmidt took bronze in the javelin in 1976. Seilala Sua, who in June won her fourth NCAA discus title for UCLA, is closing in on the world's best. Dawn Ellerbe dominates U.S. women in the hammer throw and ranks third in the world.
Steeplechaser's Hurdles: Before the 1996 Olympic track and field trials, steeplechaser Mark Croghan was a self-described "basket case," a jangle of nerves despite having ranked No. 1 in the country every year since 1993 and having already been to the '92 Olympics. He overcame his jitters to win the trials and finish fifth at the Atlanta Games. Croghan, 32, comes to the 2000 trials off a two-year fight with anemia that nearly pushed him into retirement, yet nerves will not be a problem, he says, because he and his wife, Kim, are enduring an ordeal beside which even Olympic pressure pales. On June 6 the Croghans' nine-month-old son, Griffin, underwent open-heart surgery to repair a birth defect. He spent three weeks attached to a machine that pumps blood for the heart, suffered a mild stroke when he was taken off blood thinners and on June 22 was placed on a heart-transplant list. Even as potential donors were found, Griffin's heart began functioning on its own. He was removed from the transplant list but remains on a ventilator in the pediatric intensive-care unit of Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, a 45-minute drive from the Croghans' house in Wadsworth, Ohio. Mark works out early each morning before spending the day at the hospital with Kim. (They also have a three-year-old son, Cameron.) Some days Mark squeezes in a second workout after he and Kim return home. Despite the strain, Mark has raced well, winning events in Portland and Brunswick, Maine, in the past month. "This experience has taught me to relax," says Croghan. "Now I understand that running is a game, nothing more. Don't get me wrong, the Olympics are still a big deal, but that daily 'have-to' just isn't there anymore."
Gymnastics Comebacks: After the U.S. women's gymnastics team, dubbed the Magnificent Seven, won the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, its members made enough money from tours and speaking engagements to be renamed the Munificent Seven. Today's wiser and creakier version of the Mag 7 is the Fab 5. Shannon Miller, Dominique Moceanu, Dominique Dawes, Jaycie Phelps and Amy Chow have all unretired in the past 18 months. Only Kerri Strug and Amanda Borden haven't launched comebacks. After finishing sixth at the last two world championships, the U.S. can use some old blood. "The stability and prestige the returners bring, we must have that," says Bela Karolyi, the team coordinator, who will have the greatest say in choosing the squad for Sydney after the trials in August. Yet at the U.S. Classic in Tulsa, won last Saturday by Vanessa Atler, Chow placed only fifth, Moceanu sixth and Phelps 14th. Dawes stayed home to train in Maryland, and Miller pulled out after sustaining a hairline fracture of her right tibia on Thursday. Here's a look at the comeback, er, kids, with Karolyi's take on their Olympic prospects. Amy Chow, 22: As a pre-med student with a 3.9 average at Stanford, Chow took a chemistry class with Chelsea Clinton. She returned to action last fall, during her junior year, and placed first at the Bluewater Invitational in March. "She is way ahead of the other returners," Karolyi says. Dominique Dawes, 23: She feared speaking in grade-school classes but became a motivational speaker and appeared in a Broadway production of Grease. "Her bar routines have the full amplitude of the spectacular '96 routines," Karolyi says, "but her absence [from Tulsa] was for me a surprise. Every other returner had a bad first meet. She cannot afford that now." Shannon Miller, 23: Two years ago Miller and her future husband, physician Chris Phillips, obtained a protective order against a man who had stalked Miller. Police searched the man's home, where they found drawings of Miller with her head cut off. Miller returned to international competition in June. Karolyi, asked to pick one routine from a Mag 7 gymnast that would best suit the specialist role, chose Miller's beam set, even though she fell off twice in her comeback meet last month. Dominique Moceanu, 18: In '96 Moceanu, then 14 and only 4' 4", became the youngest U.S. female to win an Olympic gymnastics gold medal. She has since grown 10 inches, changed coaches three times and taken out a protective order against her father, Dumitru, claiming he planned to kill a former coach of hers. (The order was lifted within four months.) "I still love my family," says Moceanu, whose Olympic chances have doubled since April, according to Karolyi. "It really sucked to have headlines about them plastered everywhere." Jaycie Phelps, 20: After three knee surgeries, Phelps says, "I get frustrated more easily by mistakes. I have to make my landings count." She is an investor in the group that merged with Desert Devils Gymnastics, where she trains in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Her routines don't yet have enough difficulty," Karolyi says, "but her progress and dedication are remarkable." —Brian Cazeneuve Esther Kim and Kay Poe arrived at a Houston sports club last Thursday ready to kick up a storm. It was the pair's first day in a gym together since the U.S. taekwondo trials in May, at which Kim, the No. 2-ranked U.S. Olympic flyweight, relinquished a sure berth in Sydney to her injured best friend, Poe, the world's No. 1, by bowing out of their final match. In Houston, after three warmup kicks, Poe felt a pop in her left knee -- the same knee she had hurt in the trials. She took Kim's arm and walked gingerly out of the aerobics room and over to the stair machines. "If she has to, she can just kick with the other leg for today," Kim said. After four weeks of rehab, Poe's toughest foe is time. She will need all her kicks in Sydney. On Thursday, Poe spent 30 minutes climbing, then returned to the aerobics room, telling herself, I won't listen for more pops. Soon her feet were flailing the kicking paddles. "I knew Kay wasn't hurt enough to stop," said Kim. "I know her like she's my sister." At the trials Kim made the sort of sportsmanship-affirming gesture usually reserved for siblings. Poe, 18 and the overwhelming favorite in her weight class, had dislocated her left patella when she banged knees with Mandy Meloon in their preliminary match, which Poe won. Kim, 20, joined Poe in a holding area and helped ice her friend's knee an hour before the two would face each other for the Olympic berth. Then she saw Poe's futile attempt to stand, and the words just came out: "Kay, what if I just bow down to you when we get in the ring?" Poe said no, and the pair spent the next half hour fighting about not fighting. "We have to fight," Poe said. "Don't argue," Kim said. "I'm sorry." "Shut up. Quit apologizing." "What?" "I don't know, just shut up." "I'm sorry." On Thursday, Kim recalled sitting next to her friend in the ring after having bowed down and thinking, This is the first time in my life I really feel like a champion. The next week IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch invited Kim to attend the Sydney Games, with her father, at committee expense. It's been 11 years since the Halloween party at which Kay introduced herself to Esther, took her hand and didn't let go until the party ended. From then on the two shared notes on homework and boyfriends and rarely missed meals together. Recalls Kim, "We'd laugh like we never laughed around anyone else." On Thursday, perhaps on a sugar high from three shared desserts, Kim and Poe started conducting a giggly grilling of their interviewer, leaving him red-faced and overmatched. "Sorry, I'm only like this around Esther," Poe said. "Sometimes it takes friends to bring out the worst in you." Or the best. —Brian Cazeneuve
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