Young Faces Were the Point of It All

By John Skow

Hot sun fries the big stadium at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. The track meet drowses through the sweet tedium of late afternoon. An athlete plods across the infield with a long bag of vaulting poles on his shoulder. Two tall, leggy blond women run side by side with springing, matched strides. A crew with a truck begins to set up hurdles.

Then a glint of light catches the eye: a javelin, thrown by one of the women in the heptathlon competition. It arcs down into the sod: 120 ft. and change. The distance is not impressive. "Wait for Jackie," someone says. Jackie Joyner, silver medalist at the Los Angeles Olympics last summer, has won the first five heptathlon events here at the U.S. Olympic Committee's National Sports Festival meet. She appears at the beginning of the javelin run-in, holds her spear head-high, level with the ground, and flows into the unmistakable prancing, straight-backed run that must have been the same when soldiers threw those weapons in the Trojan War. The javelin thuds down at 144 ft. 11 in. There is a roar. Casual fans are delighted, but the knowledgeable are disappointed because they know that she can score several yards better.

Joyner does reach 147 ft. 9 in. on her next try, and no opponent today will come close. But she needs another 10 ft. in the javelin to beat Jane Frederick's American heptathlon record of 6,803 points. She hoists her last throw too high. It noses up, catches air and falls short. There is no time to brood; she has an 800-meter run to get through. Less than an hour later, tiring, she squeezes out a win in this last competition--a gaudy seven victories out of seven events. And though her point total of 6,718 leaves her 85 short of Frederick's mark, the victory can be read as a foreshadow of the Seoul Olympics in the summer of '88.

So the U.S. Olympic Committee devoutly hopes. Olympic campaigns, like the presidential kind, now are nearly perpetual, and since 1978 the U.S.O.C. has held a National Sports Festival for U.S. athletes in every non-Olympic year. The advantages are that the fellow who puts the pigeons in crates and releases them at the opening ceremonies gets to stay in practice, and that the athletes and the rest of us remain attentive. There were absentees at Baton Rouge among the top U.S. competitors, and crowds were lighter than festival boosters had expected. But among those who came to this circus of 30-odd summer sports and three winter skating events, the mood seemed light and untroubled. For athletes the meet was important but not career-breaking. For spectators both the nationalistic baying and the oppressive security of the Olympics were absent. A visitor could park and buy a ticket at the door to almost any competition site and as often as not chat with an athlete waiting to play in the next match.

Here, for example, is Mark Telthorster, 32, a team handball goalie from Columbus, watching two women's teams play the violent and, in the U.S., wholly unappreciated game that has captured his imagination. A fast and not very subtle cross between basketball and soccer, it looks wrong to the basketball-educated eye, explains Telthorster, who hopes to coach the sport professionally, because you may take three full steps before and after dribbling. And, yes--here three or four bodies splat together and hit the floor--because very aggressive body checking is permitted. "Awright, way to deck her, Sandra!" yells a 6-ft.-tall woman athlete in pink shorts and a muscle shirt.

Five minutes of watching a field hockey game on the L.S.U. campus produces a quick and no doubt prejudiced rejection of the sport: clotted misery, so constipated by defense, whistle blowing and too many players that a successful scoring drive seems accidental. A stroll to the archery field, where Rick McKinney and Darrell Pace, the two best archers in the world, are shooting at the same target 50 meters away. After 1 1/2 days of drawing and letting fly, Pace is ahead, 717 to 712. In two more days, McKinney manages to pull three points nearer, but Pace wins it, 2,592 to 2,590. An unmatched pair.

Ten minutes away is the nattily named Natatorium, where a rare sight awaits. The great Greg Louganis, a double gold medalist at Los Angeles, completely butchers a couple of dives in the 10-meter platform prelims. He has explained, in his bashful, self-effacing way, that he is not really training. Headshaking here; sad to see a fine athlete on the downward slide. Uh-huh. But when the diving is finished a couple of days later, guess which bashful, self-effacing phenomenon has another two golds? The real surprise is that Michele Mitchell also wins two. She won the silver last summer in the 10 meter platform, and owns that event, but now she outclasses Teammate Kelly McCormick, another Olympic silver medalist, in the springboard.

The U.S. diving veterans came in force, but the swimmers at Baton Rouge were unfamiliar faces, for now. A big, knobby 16-year-old named Jeffrey Olsen, from Austin, won four individual races and anchored a winning relay team, and well before he was through he was a TV fixture, peering at the world through water-splotched glasses and grinning a big, happy grin. Molly Magill, 14, became another instant darling, winning the 1,500 freestyle and sharing in the 800 freestyle relay victory as her coach lumbered along the poolside yelling encouragement.

The young faces were the point of it all. John Williams, a 6-ft. 8-in. power forward from the L.S.U. basketball team, has the face and body of a warrior at 18. Danny Manning, a 6-ft. 11-in. forward from the University of Kansas, is expressive and full of fun, a cheerleader. They were the best of perhaps a dozen basketbalers who looked as if they could beat the world next week, if necessary. Graceful Debi Thomas, 18, a tall, athletic figure skater, was a new face only to the public, for whom she was the first black skater to achieve prominence. She was the class of the meet, however, and her gold medal was expected in the absence of the top-ranked Tiffany Chin. The surprise was the strong silver-medal performance of a relative unknown, Caryn Kadavy, 18. Chris Bowman, another 18-year-old skater, pulled his reputation up a notch by winning a silver behind Brian Boitano, 21, the favorite.

As the new faces and personalities took on reality, so did unfamiliar sports. Sean O'Neill, a lean, dazzlingly fast 17-year-old table-tennis player who won the men's singles, took time out to explain his strategy: "Serve short. Disguise your spin. The return is tentative, and you've got him." A friendly tribe of Tae Kwon Do fighters performed their striking sport. This will be a demonstration event in Seoul, and the Americans figure to be hors d'oeuvres for the hometown squad. But untroubled by the future, these youthful U.S. practitioners enthusiastically engaged in the Korean martial art, which involves, among other things, courage, respect for parents, and spectacular, slashing kicks to the chest and head. They bowed. The visitor bowed, too, and went off to catch a plane, realizing with pleasure that no thought of acid rain or the budget deficit had intruded in several days. --By John Skow