http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/sports/olympics/20vecsey.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Sports of The Times
A Chance for Track to Regain Its Past With Wider Appeal
Usain Bolt on Jamaica on Tuesday after competing in the men’s 200m semi-final.
By GEORGE VECSEY
Published: August 19, 2008
***Begin Quote***
As it happens, Coe has found a kindred soul in Doug Logan, the new head of USA Track & Field. Logan, the first commissioner of Major League Soccer, has called on President Bush to not commute the six-month sentence of Marion Jones, who is jailed for lying in connection with the Balco scandal and who has lost her Olympic medals because she used performance-enhancing drugs.
“Nobody will succeed if drugs continue to be the first or second or third question,” Logan said, referring to track’s news conferences. Then he lamented the marginal state of the sport.
“Track and field kept ambling down the road while all those Ferraris passed them,” he said. “The N.F.L.; what David Stern did with basketball; Mark McCormack, a genius, built golf on a new business model; Donald Dell and others in tennis; the France family with Nascar.”
Born in Cuba, Logan attended Manhattan College and fell in love with big-time track of the 1960s, particularly the Millrose Games. He said, “I can still hear the footsteps on those wooden boards, with all those splinters — Ron Delany, Eamonn Coghlan in the Wanamaker Mile.”
Now, he said, “We’ve got to blow it up and start all over.” He lamented the Balkanized calendar that had American athletes qualifying in the trials in June but then there was “a five-week hiatus, with four or five European meets, with our kids flying all over the place.” As a result, he said, many performances are down from their peak in June.
•
The sport could be “a marketer’s dream,” Logan said, adding: “The rules are simple — get there first. Everybody has tried to race his older brother.” He also criticized the cost and elapsed time of the world championships, noting that the Prefontaine meet in Oregon every spring “gets it all done in 2 ½ hours.”
He concluded: “U.S.A.T.F. has to be the promoter of the last resort. We have to cajole people out of their narrow point of view.” As a former rock promoter, Logan predicted that Usain Bolt could “fill Icahn Stadium single-handedly any time he wants,” referring to the modest stadium under the Triborough Bridge.
On May 31, Bolt set a world record of 9.72 at that stadium, and the other night he dropped it to 9.69 while thumping his chest. Bolt has galvanized the Bird’s Nest. With new leadership, maybe Bolt and his Jamaican running mates could make the “granddaddy of them all” relevant more than once every four years.
***End Quote***
Logan, Doug (MC????) new head of USA Track & Field
# # # # #
