For the Record, Effort Wasn’t Worth a Bonus

Many onlookers were puzzled when Jim Knaub of Long Beach seemed to deliberately slow down toward the finish line of the Boston Marathon, even though he was propelling his wheelchair at a world-record pace.

Now Knaub reveals why: “I wanted to sort of leave something for next year. Year to year, we sort of live on the bonuses these things generate.”

Knaub said he was leaning on the “binders” or brakes, through part of the last stretch because competitors get bonus money for every record they can break.

Something he learned from Sergei Bubka, no doubt.

Moving decimal: Russ Grimm recently retired as a player for the Washington Redskins to become the team’s assistant tight ends coach. The biggest change, he noted, was the difference in salaries.

“I think they dropped a digit, going from the player’s contract to the coach’s contract,” he said.

Trivia time: What do golf, croquet, polo, cricket, motor boating and tug of war have in common?

Sailors note: If America’s Cup sailors could walk on water, it would be quicker to walk than to sail. At least, that’s what comparative times show for the Olympic 50-kilometer walking trials at New Orleans last weekend and Dennis Conner’s winning time in Tuesday’s America’s Cup heat. The walkers averaged a mile in 7.8 minutes, while the yachts took 8.7 minutes for the same distance.

Freeloader: The Raiders’ Bob Golic was talking about athletes and their relationship with fans at a luncheon at the Los Angeles Athletic Club:

“Being imposed upon goes with the territory of being a professional athlete, but sometimes they do go a little far. The thing you hear all the time is, ‘I don’t want to interrupt you, but . . . ‘ One day I was eating dinner with my wife and a guy pulled up a chair and sat down. I chatted with him a few minutes when I noticed he was eating off my plate. Now that was too much.”

Tell it as it is: Senior golfer Jim Colbert, asked about his career as a quarterback and defensive back at Kansas State, said that his greatest memory was of Howard Cosell.

“He introduced me at some dinner as a scatback from the University of Kansas,” Colbert said. “After that, I was never sure about anything else I heard him say.”

Short of words: When Fred Couples was honored by golf writers as player of the year the night before the Masters, his wife Deborah accepted the award for him. Two sentences into her acceptance speech, she suddenly stopped and said: “I’ve already said more than Fred would have.”

Optical illusion: Gary Cooper, who received an Oscar nomination for portraying Lou Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees,” was right-handed. Gehrig was left-handed. How did film editor Daniel Mandell handle that?

Cooper batted right-handed, then ran to third base, and Mandell flopped the film, so that it appeared Cooper was a left-hander running to first base, according to the Amateur Athletic Foundation newsletter.

Trivia answer: All are discontinued sports in the Olympic Games.

Quotebook: Times columnist Jim Murray, after listening to Pat Haden, Jim Colbert and Elgin Baylor discussing their golf game at celebrity tournament: “What’s an eagle?”