European athletes World Cup favourites

Press, 2 September 1977, Page 28

European athletes World Cup favourites

By

ALEX FRERE.

NZPA correspondent

Dusseldorf ; For the first time, the world’s fastest and strongest I track and field stars will compete together outside the Olympic Games when the inaugural World Cup starts I tomorrow morning (N.Z. ij time). The three-day meeting will take place in Dusseldorf’s >1 ultra-modem stadium beside the Rhine, and the athletes have been selected to take part on a continental basis. The eight teams in the men’s events will be from the United States, Asia, Oceania, Africa, East Germany, West Germany, a team called the Americas — made up from Canadian, Caribbean, Central and South American countries — and a team called Europe — comprised of the European athletes currently in best form outside the two ' Germanies. I The women’s events will I nave the same make-up,

except that Russia will replace West Germany as the second team from Europe. The European teams were selected from the Europa Cup finals in Helsinki earlier this month, where the failure of the Russian men to qualify was the major surprise. There will be two cups — for men and for women — and teams will be awarded points on a 9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. The men will compete over 20 events and the women over 14. There will be no decathlon, marathon, walking events or pentathlon.

The African team will be missing competitors from Tanzania and Uganda, two countries which still maintain the sporting boycott begun at Montreal against New Zealand. The two missing stars will be Uganda's former 400-metre hurdles world record-holder, John Akii Bua, and Filbert Bayi, of Tanzania. But almost everyone else will be here. Cuba’s Alberto Juantorena will be looking

[to repeat his double Olympic victory in the 400 and 800 metres, while the 100 metres Californian, Steve Williams, faces Cuba’s Silvio Leonard, the only man to break the 10-second barrier this year and only the second ever to do so on electronic timing, as well as East Germany’s 20-year-old Eugen Ray. The distance events are unlikely to see any world records, with most athletes unwilling to bum up energy for their fast finish by setting a stiff pace.

John Walker’s main rivals in the 1500 metres will be the Briton Steve Ovett and'West Germany’s Thomas Wessinghage, both of whom have beaten Walker this northern summer.

The combined Australian and New Zealand team competing at Oceania will not be fielding Dick Quax, the world record holder, in the 5000 metres, preferring instead the Australian David Fitzsimons, whose best time is 24 seconds

slower than Quax’s 13:12.9 set last month in Stockholm.

Marty Liquori (United States) will be competing but could find the finishing pace of Ethiopia’s Miruts Yifter, one of the African stars missing at Montreal, tough to handle.

Yifter, will also be a favourite in the 10,000 metres, where he has shown he can run a final lap of 54 seconds. East Germany has trained its runner, Joerg Peter, to do exactly the same, anticipating a slow pace with the resulting final lap quite spectacular.

Alejandro Casenas, of Cuba, set a world record of 13.21 in the 110 metres hurdles at the world university games in Sofia but was brought down with a bump by the*- American Charlie Foster, who beat him last week.

The bespectacled Edwin: Moses set a world record of! 47.45 in the 400 metres hurdies when he qualified fori

the U.S. team at the A.A.U.I trials in Los Angeles in! June, and nobody has come within two seconds of that i this northern summer. In the field events there will again be random testing for anabolic steroids, which could make the distances achieved this year largely irrelevant. But the field events should dramatise how far the Third World countries have been left; behind because of lack of coaching. In the hammer, for example, Russia’s Yuri Sedych has thrown more than 25 metres further than the African champion, Youssef Ben Abid, of Tunisia.

Dwight Stones will be looking to make up for his Montreal fiasco in the high jump. His two major rivals will be the East German Rolf Beilschmidt, who has jumped 7-7 this year, and Poland's Jacek Wszola, who won the gold medal at Montreal.

tne U.S. womens team failed to win a gold medal at Montreal and will again be lucky to win an event at Dusseldorf. The East German women won 11 out of 15 events at the Europa Cup and will be odds-on favourites to win the women’s cup. Every women’s world record is held by an East Europtean and the rest of the world is unlikely to break [that stranglehold over the week-end. Stan Huntsman, coach of the United States team, predicted yesterday that the crack European squads would provide the strongest opposition. "I pick East Germany and

Europe 111 as the most dangerous teams,” Mr Huntsman said. “But West Germany could be there, too. “We have just about the ;best U.S. team available, but its going to be tough.”