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Relay power play Greene creates tension among U.S. teammates
It's still more than two weeks until Olympic track and field drops the curtain with last-day relays on Saturday, Sept. 30, but already U.S. team relations have reached an ugly critical mass. To review: The SoCal-based HSI foursome of 100-meter world record holder Maurice Greene, Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams and Curtis Johnson got together in August, practiced passing batons and ran two fast times in European meets. They did this ostensibly to sharpen their teamwork, but also to force the U.S. coaching staff into naming the four as the final relay squad. Head coach John Chaplin said earlier this week he'll decide only after Drummond, Greene and Johnson run the 100 meters. Meanwhile, U.S. runners like Brian Lewis (who finished fourth at the U.S. trials) and training partner Tim Montgomery, both of whom ran on the U.S.'s gold medal world championship team last summer in Seville, are seriously hacked off at Greene's power play. "That team isn't even a U.S. relay team, it's an HSI team," said Lewis Thursday after a training session in Sydney. Lewis figures that he has run better than Johnson all summer, except when he lost to him at the U.S. trials, and deserves a spot on the relay. Since Chaplin wants to run the same four people in all three rounds, only four gold medals will be given out. "Chaplin says he's picking the team, but we'll see," says Lewis. "I think we'll get railroaded. I know it's tough to be around here training not knowing if we'll get to run." Lewis says he has tried to talk to Greene, "But Maurice can be weird sometimes," he says.
Bottom line: Lewis has run better than Johnson for most of the summer. Montgomery has run better than Williams. But the HSI guys have laid down a fast relay. Lewis probably shouldn't leave any room for a medal in his luggage. Croghan inspired by son's "miracle" recoveryU.S. steeplechaser Mark Croghan's life has taken a sharp turn for the better since shortly before the U.S. trials in July. That, and he's running faster, too. Croghan's year-old son, Griffin, underwent open heart surgery in early June and nearly died from complications. He was briefly placed on a heart transplant list, and only shortly before Croghan qualified for his third Olympic team in Sacramento did Griffin begin breathing on his own, an improvement that Croghan called "a miracle," at the time. Three weeks ago, Griffin came back to the family's Wadsworth, Ohio, home (Croghan and his wife, Kim, also have a three-year-old, Cameron) for the first in more than 2 1/2 months. "He was a little disoriented at first," said Croghan of Griffin Thursday in Sydney, "but then he settled right in." Just before Griffin came home, Croghan made his only trip to Europe and ran 8:11 in a 3,000-meter steeplechase race in Monaco. It was Croghan's fastest time since 1995, and now he seems likely to make the Sydney final and perhaps even approach his fifth-place finish in Atlanta four years ago. Meanwhile Pascal Dobert, who beat Croghan at the U.S. trials with a blistering finish, is trying to fight off the effects of a late-summer iron deficiency. Dobert dropped out of the same Monaco race that Croghan ran so well, came home and took an Iron injection and has been supplementing with pills since. Pettigrew: Johnson is vulnerableU.S. 400-meter runner Antonio Pettigrew, who is running on his first Olympic team, says he won't kill his own medal chances by trying to match Michael Johnson's early speed ('96 silver medalist Roger Black of Great Britain says there's no quicker way to fail), but also says that M.J. is far more susceptible to defeat than he was in '96. "His foot speed is not what it was in '96," says Pettigrew. "This year might be the year to get him. But myself, I just want to get on the podium." Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is covering the action on the
track in Sydney for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back daily to read his
reports.
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