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Sunday, April 30, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
Not many prospective home-owners include on their wish list of desirable features "a downstairs like a dungeon."
That attribute has been especially important, however, for Todd Williams, one of the favorites in next Sunday's U.S. Olympic men's marathon trials. Williams, his wife, Stephanie, and their two children moved into a new house recently, and the rather spartan basement has meshed well with his marathon training.
"It's like another apartment," Williams said. "I have a treadmill, a weight machine, a bedroom and a bathroom. I see Steph about 30 minutes out of the day."
He laughed, then turned serious. "I sleep in a different place from my wife. My whole life is dedicated to May 7."
More than 100 of the country's top marathoners will compete here in an attempt to earn one of three berths available for the U.S. Olympic men's marathon team, which will compete in the final event of the Olympic Games in Sydney on Oct. 1. Most have a Williams-like story of sacrifice.
Alfredo Vigueras, who won last year's UPMC Health System/City of Pittsburgh Marathon, which was the 1999 national championship, spent six weeks training in Mexico. He lived in a cabin with no modern amenities, so he had to travel to find a phone and talk to his wife and daughter for 10 minutes a week.
Jonathan Hume, who finished fifth in last year's Pittsburgh Marathon and qualified for the world championships, quit his job as a teacher at Chatfield High school in suburban Denver to devote himself to training. He and his wife want to make sure she can be a full-time mom, and they were lucky that his sponsor, Invesco Funds, gave him a part-time job.
And Rod DeHaven, who set his personal record of 2 hours, 13 minutes, 2 seconds in the 1998 Chicago Marathon while working full-time as a computer programmer, cut back to part-time in January, decreasing his family's income while increasing -- he hopes -- his chances of going to the Olympics.
"It's helped quite a bit," he said. "Not just getting more sleep, but having not as many days where I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze in 10 miles before work. I think it's made a world of difference. Looking at my training logs before Boston last year and comparing to what I've done this spring -- to me, it seems like night and day."
Whether a marathoner actually makes the Olympic team depends on many other factors; excellence in few other events is as dependent on weather or just having a good day than the 26.2-mile race through a city's streets.
In this year's Olympic trials, however, the marathoners need to contend with two other variables:
If he competes, Khannouchi would be, by far, the class of the field -- his world record is 2 hours, 5 minutes, 42 seconds, nearly four minutes faster than anyone else has run. But uncertain if his citizenship would come through in time and unwilling to give up a six-figure payday, Khannouchi competed April 16 in the London Marathon. He finished third there in 2:08, and whether he can be recovered enough to run well in the trials is uncertain, especially considering that Pittsburgh's course is more difficult than London's.
"I fully expect that Khalid will be running," said DeHaven, who based his assessment on a Houston Chronicle report that called Khannouchi's citizenship an 80 percent possibility.
"So I fully anticipate a lot of people wary of taking off or pushing the pace -- they're going to assume Khalid will do that. I don't think Khalid will do anything. He'll wait to the last three miles, the last two miles, and run as little as he has to."
This controversy, which began when the IAAF, the international governing body for track and field, made the A standard two minutes faster less than a year before the U.S. trials, has haunted the marathoning community for months. If the winner of the trials doesn't run 2:14 or faster, the United States will send only one marathoner to Sydney instead of its usual three.
Only two American men, David Morris and Joe LeMay, are entering the trials having already achieved the A standard.
The situation was identical for the women's trials in Columbia, S.C., in February, where the worst-case scenario happened. On an unseasonably hot day, with temperatures reaching into the 80s, unknown Christine Clark won the trials in 2:33:31 -- 31 seconds slower than the A standard. She will be the only American female marathoner in Sydney.
Race director Larry Grollman and USA Track and Field have tinkered with the prize structure to reflect the possibilities in case the top three runners don't meet the A standard.
First place is worth $40,000, second is $25,000 and third is $20,000. The runners who make the Olympic team will receive an additional bonus -- $35,000 for the first spot, $15,000 for the second and $10,000 for the third. The top 20 finishers will win money.
Williams, for one, finds the system appalling, and he said that if he wins the trials in 2:14:01 or slower, he will decline the automatic berth on the team, paving the way -- he hopes -- for Morris and LeMay to run and thereby doubling the United States' participation in the Olympic marathon.
"I think someone needs to take a stand," Williams said. "I don't think it's fair that the guys who killed themselves in October and December to run those times. I'm not doing it to get extra this or extra that -- I just think it's not fair. It's a fairness issue.
"And another thing. Our sport's down right now in terms of interest in running. I think the more you talk about the bad things that happen that not as much interest is going to happen. It's going to get worse instead of better. I feel that we have to say 'This guy killed himself to get on the Olympic team' rather than 'We're taking one guy because the rest of the Americans suck.' We need to show the positive rather than the negative."
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Will Khalid Khannouchi, the world-record holder from Morocco whose quest for American citizenship is coming down to the wire, be able to compete?