UNDER FIRE : U.S. Track Athletes Answer Criticism, Risk Expulsion After Tour of South Africa

The divisive issue of South African sport has been difficult for Bruce Fordyce, who lives in the Johannesburg suburb of Forest Town.

Fordyce, perhaps the world’s best ultra-marathon runner, empathizes with his fellow South African athletes, who are stymied by an international boycott resulting from their country’s official policy of apartheid, or racial segregation.

But he realizes that the boycott has been instrumental in forcing desegregation of sport in his country, which he endorses.

“But how can you have normal sport in an abnormal society?” Fordyce pondered recently in a telephone interview.

Such questions have recently been considered since 14 U.S. track and field athletes defied the international ban and participated in a tour of South Africa last month, the first time since 1962 that American track athletes had competed there. The athletes were paid $30,000 to $100,000 each to compete.

The tour’s 14 athletes and 2 of its organizers have been called to a hearing today in Chicago before officials of The Athletics Congress, the national governing body of U.S. track and field. Those attending will answer charges of competing in a country suspended by the International Amateur Athletic Federation.

All risk losing their eligibility to compete or to coach in future national and international competition, and they also risk expulsion from TAC.

The athletes will be questioned by a three-member panel, but, because of the potential for further litigation, it is unlikely that definitive action will be taken.

The athletes have stressed the humanitarian aspects of the tour, which generated enormous enthusiasm from the South African sporting public. They said the 10-day tour gave them reason to hope that sport can foster further changes in a country that is under increasing worldwide sanctions.

The athletes maintain that the country is in transition, and that South Africa is falsely characterized by the U.S. media. They said they saw blacks and whites competing and training together in track, a sport that begin easing racial separation as early as 1971.

They hope to bring to the surface the contradictions and confusion that polarize South Africa.

But by competing there, the athletes have been accused of supporting the Pretoria government.

“I don’t see any hope for this country until apartheid is gone,” Fordyce, who is white, concluded.

The worldwide sporting community doesn’t, either. It--including the International Olympic Committee--has long excluded South Africa from participation in the world sports arena. South Africa has not competed in the Olympics since 1960 and was expelled from the IOC in 1970. It was dropped from the IAAF, the governing body of track and field, in 1976.

“Those who went down there are a disgrace,” said Peter Cava, a TAC spokesman. “I really doubt their motives.”

John Holt, executive director of the IAAF, said from London that the three-meet mini-tour did nothing to increase South Africa’s chances of regaining admission into his organization. The South Africans had hoped that the tour would put them in a better light in the IAAF’s eyes.

“South Africans are so bored with playing among themselves,” said Alan Dunn, a South African correspondent in Washington.

Naude Koltter, a prominent South African businessman who supports the South African Athletic Union, the country’s governing body for track and field, said the situation has reached a point that at any given track meet, spectators not only predict the winners, but the winning times.

So, for the last year, officials plotted to lure an international team to their soil after the Olympics. Gert Le Roux, president of the SAAU, said the organization wanted to inject enthusiasm into track and field.

The idea was to devise a three-meet tour against American athletes at Johannesburg, Stellenbosch and Germiston. Though it was the beginning of the South African season, athletes and officials were told in August to prepare for a series of major meets, beginning Oct. 15.

Dick Tomilison of Live Oak, Calif., a longtime field event coach who now sells athletic equipment, organized the U.S. athletes. Tomilison, a former El Camino College coach, said he had been trying to arrange a tour since 1971, when he coached South African discus thrower Jan Van Reenen. Tomilison said he was sensitive to the plight of South African athletes because of his association with Van Reenen.

After almost 15 years of trying to take a team to South Africa, Tomilison was invited to speak at a coaches’ clinic at Stellenbosch University in 1987. Arrangements for the tour were negotiated there.

After receiving the kind of assurances he felt were necessary for a successful tour, such as no government control of the athletes’ speech or movement, Tomilison started recruiting. He and South African representatives solicited scores of athletes at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials last July, and they eventually received commitments from 14 Americans, 7 blacks and 7 whites.

“You’ve got to take some risks to get the point across,” said Tom Petranoff, a former world record-holder in the javelin who competed on the tour and recruited athletes.

“Athletics have been ruined by two Olympic boycotts (1980 and 1984) and a Ben Johnson drug controversy. They always seem to punish the athletes. South African athletes have been punished, too. I don’t think it is fair. I am against apartheid. But I also am against anybody who uses sport to put pressure on another country or people.”

Besides Petranoff, who lives in Oceanside, those who competed included Carol Cady of Los Altos, Calif., a 1988 Olympian who holds the U.S. record in the discus; Tyrus Jefferson of Tyler, Tex., an up-and-coming long jumper; Tom Hintnaus of El Segundo, a former Brazilian Olympic pole vaulter; Dave Laut of Oxnard, a 1984 Olympic bronze medalist in the shotput; John Powell of Cupertino, Calif., a two-time Olympic bronze medalist in the discus; James Robinson of Oakland, a 1976 Olympian and Pan American gold medalist; Milan Stewart of West Covina, a 1982 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. hurdles champion at USC; Ray Wicksell of Phoenix, a national-class middle-distance runner; Ruth Wysocki of Canyon Lakes, a 1984 Olympian in the 800 and 1,500 meters, and Riverside City College athletes James Andrews, Kevin Atkins, Cedric Silder and Keith Thibodeaux.

Accompanying Tomilison as coaches were Ted Banks, Riverside City track coach, and Skip Robinson, Pasadena City College track coach.

Many of those recruited were, like Petranoff, at the end of their careers. As a result, a lifetime suspension was not nearly the concern that it would be for younger athletes. Also, the trip represented a chance to earn one last big payday.

Most of the athletes received $10,000 to $35,000 per meet, plus bonuses for breaking South African records, which many did. Jim Spivey, one of the best U.S. milers, said he was offered $150,000 to $200,000, but he declined.

“We are furious that they have sold themselves for selfish financial gain at the expense of the oppressed masses,” said Colin Clarke, general secretary of the African Council on Sport, a Cape Town anti-apartheid organization.

“I couldn’t have gone for money,” said Filbert Bayi, a Tanzanian distance runner who trains in Texas. “I can’t buy or sell my freedom for a million dollars.”

Cady, 26, who would like to return to graduate school at Stanford, where she earned a degree in mechanical engineering, said discus throwers do not receive much financial support in the United States.

“A marathon runner wouldn’t have to consider an option like this,” she said. “They can earn $50,000 from one race.”

Some of the athletes conceded that the money was the primary factor for going, but they said the experience had an unexpectedly profound effect on their lives.

“I went over for the money,” Laut, 31, said. “At first, I went over with blinders on. I didn’t want to see that apartheid stuff. I was going to shut everybody out and just throw. But once I had seen the athletes there, I felt compelled to speak out. The guys who are suffering are the athletes. It struck me that it wasn’t fair. I just want to let the TAC know what we saw.”

What they saw, say some who have lived there, is not what they think they saw.

“It was not a regular event,” said Sydney Maree, one of the first black South African runners to receive the deep green and gold colors of the country’s Springbok national team.

Maree, who grew up in Atteridgeville, a black village near the diamond mines of Pretoria but who today is a U.S. citizen, recalled painful experiences of being a world-class black runner in South Africa. Because his family still lives in a black township, he speaks cautiously, fearing that he will be denied access to visit them if he is too critical of his homeland.

Petranoff said that he invited Maree to join the tour and that Maree seriously considered going for the money.

Maree, however, said, “I told Tom he was very ignorant if he thought I would do something like that.”

Maree said there may be integration on the field of play, but added, “The athletes don’t go home together. They obviously live in two different worlds. I doubt (Americans) have seen how conditions really are.

“Their movements were controlled, even if they think not. They just can’t wake up and go to any township they want to.”

Though none of the athletes interviewed could remember the names of the townships they had visited, Tomilison said they were taken to Cape Town’s Crossroads, one of the most notorious because of its poverty.

The tour members said that except for a mild demonstration upon their arrival at the airport, they were greeted warmly.

Hintnaus, an aspiring model, was so enamored of the country that he has decided to stay for an indefinite period and is seeking job opportunities. Wicksell is training there through January.

Stewart said he discussed the apartheid problem with white sports officials and came away satisfied with their sincerity.

“After 2 weeks of living with people, you can tell if they are lying,” he said.

Stewart and others said they feel good about their actions despite criticism to the contrary. If they are declared ineligible, so be it. They have taken a stand they believe in.

Though many of the athletes say they have received nothing but support upon their return, Banks and the Riverside City athletes were involved in controversy. Black community leaders called for Banks’ resignation, and the tour became an issue in the local elections for school board, which is responsible for Riverside City College.

The American athletes said sports officials should visit South Africa to see conditions first-hand before passing judgment. The athletes said they are against apartheid and the white minority government’s stranglehold on the African nation.

But they think that isolating South Africa is hypocritical, particularly when the hardest-hit victims within the country are the very people IAAF and IOC officials are trying to help--the black and mixed-race populations.

They contend that if South Africa were to compete internationally in track and field, many black South Africans would emerge as the world’s fastest, particularly in marathon running. Thus, these blacks would get university scholarships, endorsements and other benefits enjoyed by elite athletes.

“It seems to be a double whammy against these poor guys, like punishing the victims,” said Neill Lurssen, a South African correspondent. “There is a feeling of resentment. They ask themselves, how can the international community ban black South Africans when the apparent aim is to help them?”

Furthermore, the athletes said they cannot understand how South Africa’s Western allies can exclude it but welcome Eastern bloc countries and others with established human rights violations.

“I’ve competed in East Germany, but that doesn’t mean I am a communist,” Wysocki said.

Wysocki also said she was surprised at the number of U.S. industries doing business in South Africa, including Mobil Oil, one of the major sponsors of the IAAF grand prix circuit.

“Most of the gold and diamonds that people wear on their wedding fingers comes from South Africa,” Wysocki said. “If people want to make a statement, why don’t they throw away their wedding rings? You can carry this as far as you want.”

Many South Africans simply want the chance to participate in worldwide events.

“We didn’t want to go this route,” Koltter said of putting together a rebel tour. “But we were forced to. We have begged and pleaded with IAAF leaders to come down here and take a look. We will not accept being discarded into the wilderness.”

The Americans have returned with sympathy for their sporting brethren. They say the issue is athletes’ rights to compete internationally.

But Alvin Chriss, special assistant to the executive director of TAC, rejects the athletes’ justifications.

“They’ve had a lifetime to speak out,” he said. “They have all been noticeable by their silence. Not until they were offered a lot of money did they say something. It’s a little late. They got paid a great deal of money to pay a price.”

The 14 may never compete internationally again, but some will return to South Africa, Tomilison said. Plans for another tour already are under way.

He said the country is progressing, albeit slowly, and his tour is just one example.

“The black neighbors are responding to South Africa now, such as in Angola,” he said. ‘We haven’t done anything that hasn’t already been started.”

But where it will lead is anyone’s guess.

Fordyce, perhaps the world’s best ultra-marathon runner, empathizes with his fellow South