Two High-schoolers May (gasp!) Run Four-minute Miles At The Millrose

This mile race may not quite be at the level of Sebastian Coe vs. Steve Ovett or Sydney Maree vs. Steve Scott, but there will be an almost magical competitive aura at 9:50 p.m. Jan. 28 at the Wanamaker Millrose Games in New York's Madison Square Garden when Mike Stahr, of Carmel, N.Y., and John Carlotti, of Bernardsville, N.J., probably the two best schoolboy milers in the country, and eight other runners assemble at the starting line for the Jumbo Elliott High School One-Mile Run. Up in the balcony, the fans of the Carmel High Rams and the Bernards High Mountaineers will be making an expectant tumult.

And the time should be very fast. Both 18-year-old seniors are aiming for Thorn Hunt's national high school indoor record of 4:02.7, set in San Diego in 1976. Stahr even talks with matter-of-fact confidence about going under four minutes in this race. Larry Byrne, a member of the three-man Millrose committee which puts together the all-star schoolboy field, says only half-jokingly that the winning time might even be better than that of the famous Wanamaker Mile, which will feature the likes of Eamonn Coghlan, Tom Byers and Ray Flynn.

"Mike Stahr and John Carlotti are two of the best talents I've seen in years," says Bill Dellinger, the track and field coach at the University of Oregon. "They have natural speed. They've demonstrated that they compete well. They remind me of two guys I recruited five or six years ago, Rudy Chapa and Alberto Salazar. They're in that class. I expect them both to continue to improve. Naturally, I'd like to see both come to Oregon."

But the coaches at Kansas, Villanova, Florida and Virginia and a host of other schools are also busy recruiting—phoning, scouting, visiting, flying the boys out to the campuses. After all, these are two schoolboys capable of breaking the four-minute barrier in the mile, and that hasn't happened since Marty Liquori did it 15 years ago.

Though they live only 90 miles apart in wooded, hilly suburban New York towns, the two have been even more remote from one another than Coe and Ovett, having met in just one race. That was last September's high school preliminary to the Fifth Avenue Mile when the relatively unknown Carlotti edged the favored Stahr with a final surge, 4:05.6 to 4:05.7. Carlotti calls the straightaway street race their "first confrontation." He says he threw in three "special" 100-mile weeks on top of a summer-long effort of 80-mile weeks to prepare for that run and the upcoming cross-country season. Stahr, smarting over the unaccustomed loss, says he didn't really train for it.

The 5'11", 135-pound Stahr, rated the top 1,500-meter high school runner in the U.S. for 1982 by Track & Field News, was the first high school junior ever to win The Athletics Congress (TAC) Junior Championship 1,500 (in 3:46.99, the equivalent of a sub-4:06 mile), competing against college freshmen. He ranks behind only Jim Ryun on a list of junior schoolboy 1,500-meter times in America. Undefeated on the track in 1982, Stahr ran the mile in 4:07 and did a 1:50.4 for 800 meters on a relay leg. He also has temporary possession of the big silver bowl that goes with the Jumbo Elliott Mile. He dominated last February's Millrose race with a tactical fast-slow-fast-paced 4:13.63, leading every step of the way.

Coach Paul Collins says Stahr is the best runner he's ever had in his 15 years of track at Carmel High. He started by winning a 440 in 7th grade and then "just seemed to take off" in the mile, according to Collins: 4:25 as a freshman, 4:15 as a sophomore and a "crazy" junior year. "He's just a very strong kid," Collins says. "He has a perfect body for distance running. He has the will. He has tremendous desire as a competitor, the willingness to endure hard workouts."

Despite that willingness, the low-key Collins, 45, a finalist in the 100-yard dash in the 1959 NCAA championships, doesn't believe in high training mileage and Stahr abhors it. His maximum weekly total is 60 miles during the summer and, in season, he usually ranges around the mid-30s with a top of 45 miles. An eight-miler on the roads is considered a long run. But he does a lot of quality work—thrice-weekly ladder workouts, going up and down from 220s to 660s, along with 440- and 880-yard intervals at 85% effort with short recoveries. His idol is, of course, that prince of low mileage, Coe, the mile world-record holder at 3:47.33.

And for what it's worth to any young runner who thinks he needs great facilities and head-to-head intrasquad competition (Carmel's next-best miler does 4:28) to become a champion, Stahr trains on the available hills and roads and on a loose cinder track. On harsh winter afternoons he has the luxury of a measured 440 around the school hallways, past the green lockers, practicing cheerleaders and teammates skimming over hurdles.

Stahr has a compact, effortless stride, smoothly propelled on taut whippet legs. "He likes to lead," says Collins. "If someone challenges him, he won't let him take the lead."