WORLD SPORTS SCENE : New Coliseum Would Include Track

Those concerned that the proposed renovation of the Coliseum will eliminate the track, thus eliminating Los Angeles from consideration for major meets, shouldn’t despair.

One plan under consideration would spare the track, although it would be hidden under retractable seating during the football season.

Another plan would remove the track but allow for a temporary track for significant meets. Los Angeles is bidding for the 1992 Olympic trials and the 1995 World Championships.

Whether the modernized but perhaps smaller Coliseum would be approved by the International Olympic Committee is another matter. But who is seriously talking about bringing another Summer Olympics to Los Angeles within the foreseeable future?

Harry Usher, for one.

Usher, general manager of the L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee, said last week that he believes it could be Los Angeles’ turn again as soon as 2004. He would get an argument from New York and Washington organizers, who are promoting their cities for 2004. Then there are the Atlanta folks, who presume their city will be the next one in the United States to stage the Summer Olympics.

Atlanta is the designated U.S. bid city for the 1996 Summer Olympics, the site of which will be determined by the IOC in September. John Rodda, a respected journalist from the Guardian in England, wrote recently that Toronto is the front-runner for 1996, ahead of sentimental favorite Athens. But he wasn’t unkind to Atlanta.

“Atlanta is running late but strong. . . . But perhaps it is a little too soon after Los Angeles to go to the States and a little too uncomfortable at the height of the summer to go to Georgia,” he wrote.

Whatever the destiny of the Coliseum, it will not affect the 1991 U.S. Olympic Festival in Los Angeles. Tentative venues announced last week did not include the stadium.

“If we have 50,000 people for the opening ceremony, that would look inadequate at the Coliseum,” Usher said. “But 50,000 people at Dodger Stadium would be exciting.”

He said Dodger Stadium is one of the possibilities for the opening ceremony. The track and field competition probably will be held at UCLA’s Drake Stadium, which would be expanded to a capacity of 20,000 with temporary seating.

Proposed venues for other major sports include basketball at Pauley Pavilion, boxing and gymnastics at the Forum, figure skating at the Sports Arena and swimming and diving at USC’s McDonald’s Olympic Pool.

In the biggest gambling scandal in England in more than 20 years, the coach and chairman of a soccer team, Swindon, have been charged with betting against their team. “Say It Ain’t So, Lou,” read one London newspaper headline, referring to Coach Lou Macari.

Macari and the team’s chairman, Brian Hillier, allegedly won $7,000 by betting against their team before its 5-0 loss to heavily favored Newcastle in a 1988 FA Cup game. They reportedly needed the money to pay the team’s hotel bill in Newcastle.

Jessica Mills of Northfield, Ill., won the world junior figure skating championship in 1989 while training under Barbara Roles in Harbor City, but she has been fading since.

After finishing second to Kyoko Ina in the junior national meet last year, Mills moved to the East Coast to train with Ina’s coach, Peter Burrows. But that hasn’t helped. She finished sixth in the Midwest sectional last week and did not qualify for senior national, which will be held Feb. 6-11 in Salt Lake City. Mills has plenty of time to recover. She’s only 15.

The biggest surprise in the qualifying for the national occurred at the Pacific Coast sectional in San Diego, where Natasha Kuchiki of Canoga Park and Todd Sand of Irvine finished first in pairs.

Skating in Costa Mesa for John Nicks, who also has taken on defending national champions Kristi Yamaguchi and Rudi Galindo since their coach, Jim Hulick, died recently, Kuchiki and Sand now are among the medal favorites at Salt Lake City.

But even if they win, they will not be able to represent the United States at the World Championships in Halifax, Canada, because Kuchiki is only 13. Skaters have to be at least 14 to compete for world titles.

The United States may lack the talent to compete with many of the world’s best soccer teams, but it is not short of goalkeepers.

The University of Virginia’s Tony Meola won the Hermann Award as college soccer’s top player last season and had four shutouts in four starts in the World Cup qualifying tournament.

But when he missed the recent two-week training camp at La Jolla while trying out for an English team, he wasn’t missed because of the play of the University of Portland’s Kasey Keller.

“I have no problems with putting Kasey in goal against anyone at any time,” Coach Bob Gansler said. “Obviously, Tony did a tremendous job for us. But Kasey is every bit as talented.”

In fact, Gansler said he might have invited Keller to join the national team at midseason last year instead of Meola if Keller hadn’t been playing in France with the national B team.

Both Meola and Keller will be with the national team in its first games of the year, Feb. 2 and 4, at the Marlboro Cup of Miami.

More Coliseum: David Simon, president of the L.A. Sports Council, said he has been assured that a remodeled Coliseum would still be suitable for 1994 World Cup soccer games. “That’s a high priority for the Spectacor people,” he said.

The Coliseum and the Rose Bowl are among the favorites as sites for the World Cup’s most significant games, such as the opener, the semifinals and the final. A site-inspection committee from World Cup ’94 will be in Los Angeles next month.

Another favorite is Miami’s Joe Robbie Stadium, which Robbie had built to comply with international soccer specifications. The effect that his recent death will have on Miami’s bid remains to be seen.

“It’s important for someone in the Greater Miami area to pick up the slack,” said Scott LeTellier, president of the 1994 World Cup organizing committee.

Romania’s Maricica Puica, gold medalist at 3,000 meters in the 1984 Summer Olympics, who returned to Los Angeles as Paula Ivan’s coach for Friday night’s Sunkist Invitational, defended Nadia Comaneci, saying that she had lived in a gilded cage in Romania.

“I saw in Time and Newsweek that she lived like a rock star,” Puica said. “This is not true. Nadia had many invitations to go all over the world, but they only let her come here in 1984 (for the Olympics) because (Peter) Ueberroth insisted. She was in prison in Romania.

“I was happy for her that she left. I was sorry that she didn’t do it earlier. She sacrificed her childhood to achieve what she achieved in her sport.”

Comaneci also is in Los Angeles, making a movie about her life. On “The Pat Sajak Show” last week, she said she wants to coach gymnasts in the United States. She had said previously that she didn’t want to be involved in the sport.

Ireland’s Eamonn Coghlan, making a comeback on the indoor track circuit, was to run his signature event, the mile, Saturday night at a meet in Portland. He had said previously that he wanted to run only the 3,000. What will he run at the Forum on Feb. 16 in the Times/Eagle meet?

“Whatever he wants,” promoter Will Kern said.

Carl Lewis said recently he thinks Ben Johnson is still on steroids. A few days later, he released a revised statement through his Canadian attorney.

“I do not know whether Ben Johnson is using steroids or any other drugs, and I regret that any comments attributed to me were construed that way,” he said.

Hurdler Renaldo Nehemiah told the Washington Post that Lewis is “consumed with Ben Johnson.”