Little Sister Wins A Race Of Her Own

The 10,000-meter course in Wichita was flat and fast, favoring the field's milers and 5,000-meter men. That was fine with Nyambui, who has won the mile at the last two NCAA indoor championships and last summer won a silver medal in the 5,000 meters at the Moscow Olympics. Through most of the race he loped along in a front-running pack of four, which included his teammates, Motshwarateu and Rotich, and another Kenyan, Fairleigh Dickinson's Solomon Chebor. Motshwarateu and Rotich took turns making surges to wear out Chebor, who eventually developed a stitch in his side and had to struggle in for his third-place finish. Nyambui waited patiently until the 5�-mile mark, then pulled easily away to win in 29:04.

None of the top six foreigners in the NCAA race went to the nationals, and without the lure of Madrid several top Americans avoided Pocatello, too. These included Alberto Salazar, the defending champion and recent New York City Marathon winner, and Craig Virgin, who won last year's International Cross Country title. Without them, the favorites for the 10,000-meter race were America's top road racer, Herb Lindsay, and yet another foreigner, England's Nick Rose. Rose had won this event in 1977 and finished third at last year's International Cross Country. Lindsay and Rose were among the leaders at the half-mile mark when suddenly a salesman for Gojo in Fort Collins, Colo., named Jon Sinclair sprinted away from the pack and put 100 yards between himself and the rest of the field.

Sinclair graduated last year from Colorado State, where his most notable achievements were a fifth place in the mile at the 1979 NCAA indoor championships and a ninth at the NCAA cross-country meet that year. He is not unknown to road racers, however. In the past two years he has finished out of the top 10 in a road race only once, and he had won each of his three starts leading up to Pocatello.

Those wins came after Sinclair's recovery from a knee injury that sidelined him all of last summer. When he began working out hard again in September, he drastically altered his training program. He started swimming two or three nights a week to improve his oxygen intake and also to help loosen his legs after running. He took up weightlifting to build his strength. And he greatly increased the intensity of his workouts by making his runs faster and shorter. Instead of covering 15 to 17 miles a day at a seven-minute pace, he ran 10 to 12 miles under six minutes each.

Sinclair went to Pocatello in the best shape of his life. Furthermore, he had an advantage over most of the other runners because the course was at 4,600 feet and he had been training in Fort Collins at 4,800 feet. "I saw this race as a war of attrition," he said. "It was a matter of who was hurt by the altitude first, second, third, fourth and, eventually, last. I wanted someone else to lead, and I planned to hang on near the front until the altitude took effect."

Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that no one wanted to push the pace. "They were all willing to lag and go slow, and that was not the race I wanted," said Sinclair. "I decided to break open the pack, but when I went no one came with me. It shocked me to death. When I finished the first mile, I started to think about what was happening. I could see a group of eight to 10 runners forming behind me. They were waiting for me to die. But I was feeling smooth and untaxed. I figured I'd just stay out in front, and if they caught me I was running comfortably enough so that I was sure I could stay with them. I could feel what I had left. It was almost like reading a gas gauge."

Sinclair had guessed his opponents' thinking perfectly. He kept leading, and the rest of the field kept waiting for almost the entire 10,000 meters, which was essentially two laps around the women's course. "No one wanted to go after him," said Steve Scott, America's top miler, who eventually finished fourth. "At that altitude on those hills, we were too afraid of dying in the latter part of the race." Lindsay, who, many expected, would give chase, had left the energy for a late push in Chicago, where he had won a 10,000-meter road race in a snowstorm two days earlier. After struggling home in sixth place Saturday, he called his decision to run in Chicago "a mistake." Only Rose had enough left near the end to try to catch Sinclair. With less than two miles to go, he slowly moved to within 70 yards of the lead, but at the five-mile mark the altitude got to him. Eventually he was passed by Penn State's Scharsu and finished third. Scharsu never got within a football field of Sinclair, who coasted in at 31:46.6.

Sinclair was ecstatic. "No one has ever seemed to Know who I am or where I come from," he said. "That didn't used to bother me, but lately it was beginning to. I think I've been underrated. I don't attract as much attention as the people I beat all the time. I've beaten Bill Rodgers three out of four times, and everybody knows who he is. This win should get me some public notice."