Biggest Race Is Off The Red Rubber Oval

Bang, clang!

“What the heck was that?” a similarly startled neighbor asked as we both craned our necks in the upper deck of Olympic Stadium.

Alas, it was nothing but a footboard that made up a small part of press row in this spanking new coliseum. It had fallen off, crashing loudly into the row below. It was much more innocent than it sounded.

Any loud, unrecognizable sound in a place where things have gone boom with deadly results is, nonetheless, at least momentarily unsettling. Those are the kinds of things that make people who will be covering the Atlanta Games - now less than a month away - wonder if they should apply for hazardous duty pay, too.

The clatter also reminded that the biggest race going on here at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials isn’t on the multimillion dollar track that almost has reached the halfway point in its life. The red rubber oval is scheduled to be ripped up after the Paralympics that follow the Olympics. The trials are its second event. A Grand Prix event a few weeks ago was its inaugural happening.

This stadium isn’t the future home of some great annual American track and field competition. Who, after all, would come? Just less than 18,000 turned out on Friday, which was about 4,000 more than the smallest crowd to watch these trials and about 6,000 less than the largest. Maybe those who wanted to come are still reeling from the second mortgages they obtained in order to buy tickets to the quadrennial games. Maybe would-be spectators would’ve showed up if they knew that in one day, instead of three, they could see the preliminaries and finals of the 100-meter dash.

This $209-million sports theater, instead, is the future home of Ted and Jane’s baseball team, whose old house glowed Friday night just beyond the gigantic Olympic TV and scoreboard. The Giants were visiting the Braves before a whole lot more people. Their ticket stubs were good for three bucks off ducats to the trials.

The track, according to the athletes who’ve been on it, is more than ready to go. It’s hard, bouncy and fast, they’ve reported. It had the fellows who qualified for the steeplechase team Friday jumping with joy, even though they’ll be lucky next month to keep the Kenyans within sight.

“You’ve got three rounds in the Olympics, which favors them since they’re so strong,” said a jubilant Mark Croghan. “But, in the Olympics, you only have three of them.”

Their names: Gold, silver and bronze.

The track has been so good to Michael Johnson that he has toyed on it with most of his challengers. Then again, he looks as if he would’ve toyed with them running down Peachtree Street through the heart of downtown. Why he glanced from side to side on Friday as he jaunted through an opening round of the 200 meters only he knows. Like somebody else in leotards was going to be next to him. In a sports car, maybe.

“The rounds are real tricky,” Johnson explained, “and you have to make decisions as you go. With these rounds, you’re not going out there to impress anyone.”

The rest of Atlanta - well, let’s just say it hasn’t quite hit the finish line yet. It does, though, have a few more weeks to get there. It is trying hard to impress.

Dirt is still being turned here and there in the city. Heavy equipment hasn’t been mothballed just yet.

Workers on Friday were unfurling and hanging Olympic banners - those sporting Xerox’s logo - on downtown street lamp poles.

Atlanta Olympics boss Billy Payne assured everyone just this week that this city of grits will be all set by the time that torch gets here July 19. He said he was disappointed in the lack of crowds at the trials, too, until someone pointed out they weren’t much better years ago in Los Angeles.

Everyone in the press tribune, as it is called, felt a lot better when the footboard was popped back into place. Slowly, if not surely, the next Olympic venue is, well, falling together.