Trials And Jubilation

"Then run it like you do 330s, with gradual acceleration," said Connolly. "You don't have to win it. Just get in there."

"I'll win it."

Alice Brown and Jeanette Bolden, both rocket starters, were off perfectly. Ashford came out gently. At 40 meters, when she had to turn it on, it was there, and she felt no pain. She sprinted into the lead just at the line, winning in 11.18. Brown did 11.20 and Bolden 11.24.

A diagnostic ultrasound machine showed a dark spot at the point of injury, indicating hemorrhaging. Dr. Anthony Daly, vice president of health services for the LAOOC, told her, "It's up to you whether you want to run with that."

"I want three gold medals," she said, meaning the two sprints and the 4 x 100-meter relay. "They may have to put me in a sling, but I'll be there."

A day later Ashford started the first-round 200 heat, felt the injury tighten and walked in. Her future is in the Olympic 100.

In her absence, Valerie Brisco-Hooks won the 200 in 22.16, with Florence Griffith coming in second at 22.40. The finish became a blur of pink ( Brisco-Hooks) and apple green (Griffith), punctuated by the crimson of Griffith's 3�-inch curved fingernails.

Brisco-Hooks had become the first U.S. woman to break 50 seconds in the 400 with her 49.83 earlier this month at the TAC meet. But in the trials she had to reckon with Chandra Cheeseborough, who was the Pan Am 200 champion way back when she was 16, in 1975, but who had just recently forced herself to run the 400. Cheeseborough is an impressive figure, with hair in elaborate corn rows that take two hours to do, and her voice is steady, slow and sultry, with something of the tone of Billie Holiday. Startling, then, to hear it expressing such delicacies as "I don't like the 400 because I can't stand the cramping part, when afterwards your butt muscles lock."

She ran a modest first 200 in the final, while Brisco-Hooks was blazing to a seven-yard lead. Cheeseborough made a clear move then, as if she had been waiting until she got to the start of her old distance, and made up all but a yard by the stretch. Her torso perfectly erect, her arms driving high, she powered away to win by four yards in an American-record 49.28. Brisco-Hooks cut her best to 49.79. American female quarter-miling, so feeble for so long, is suddenly rich.

The women 400-meter hurdlers, too, could point to remarkable improvement. They produced a surging, shifting race that saw high schooler Leslie Maxie, who'd been second in a world junior-record 55.20 at the TAC meet, lead down the backstretch but be passed by Angela Wright, who was in turn collared by Judi Brown over the last hurdle. Brown's time was an American-record 54.93, but her first thought was to console Maxie, who had run 55.60 but had slipped to fifth. The pressure had drawn them together. "I haven't eaten right for four days because I was so nervous," said Brown. "I keep waking up in the early morning. If this race were run at 5 a.m., I'd set a new world record. I've run the thing 30,000 times in my mind."