Dual Duels In The Sun

Clancy Edwards thinks his best years lie ahead of him. He figures he is just now learning how to run. Based on form alone, he doesn't appear to have progressed much beyond sprinters' kindergarten. No one has yet taught him to bend his knees while scurrying down a track, which is why his USC teammates constantly mimic his style. Clancy himself openly admits, "I run like a duck."

While his running is merely laughable, Edwards' start is plain atrocious. The pistol has long since sounded and the field is fast disappearing in front of him before 22-year-old Clarence Edwards gets untangled from the blocks. Yet last weekend this bearded, muscular, 5'11", 180-pound duck graduated summa cum laude in sprinting by winning the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes at the National AAU championships in Los Angeles.

Asked if he considered himself the world's fastest human, Edwards replied. "How about the week's fastest human?" Ah, but what a seven days. On the previous weekend, at the NCAA championships in Eugene, Ore., Edwards had also doubled, with a 1978 world-best of 10.07 in the 100 and a meet-record 20.16 in the 200. He had further helped USC win the team title by running a leg on the Trojans' victorious 400-meter-relay team. Then, in L.A., Edwards became only the third man to achieve a double double by winning both the NCAA-AAU 100 and 200. The last to do it was Hal Davis of California, who accomplished the feat twice—a double double double?—in 1942-43. Add to that the fact that Edwards has run the world's fastest 200 this year—20.03, in a USC- UCLA dual meet—plus the fact that he was last year's World Cup 200 champion and his credentials as the World's Fastest Human seem hard to dispute.

Edwards' AAU victories earned him a spot on a U.S. team that will face a team from the U.S.S.R. in Berkeley, Calif. on July 8-9. For the most part, the U.S. will be represented by the first-and second-place winners from the AAUs and, using last weekend's performances as a gauge, it should be a singularly strong squad.

The AAU took a refreshingly positive step toward guaranteeing that the country's best athletes would be on hand in Berkeley by offering to pay team members' round-trip air fare to the meet, not just from their home cities but from wherever they will be at the time. That is a particularly important distinction because most of America's best track and field athletes spend the summer competing in Europe. As Mac Wilkins announced as soon as he had won the discus with a throw of 219'9", "I will throw against the Soviet Union only if the AAU will fly me to Berkeley from Scandinavia and then back to Scandinavia after the meet." This demand wasn't churlishness on the part of the world-record holder; it was the stating of an economic necessity. A round-trip flight, Stockholm- San Francisco, costs $1,281, which is a bit steep for an amateur athlete.

Not everyone is going to take advantage of the AAU's largess. Dan Ripley, who won the pole vault with a jump of 18'3", has a prior commitment to compete in Gateshead, England, on July 9. That meet also boasts Dwight Stones, the AAU high-jump winner with a 1978 outdoor world best of 7'6�". But overall the AAU's offer promises to make competitors out of a lot of athletes who otherwise would have been no-shows. In addition to Wilkins and Edwards, the list includes Arnie Robinson, who sailed 27-4 to win his sixth AAU outdoor long-jump title; Steve Scott, the 1.500 winner in 3:38.8; and Jan Merrill, who won the 1.500 by 10 meters in 4:09.4 and, two hours later, came back to take the 3,000 by 40 meters in a meet-record 8:56.4.

Another Scandinavian commuter will be Jodi Anderson, a sophomore at Cal State Northridge who set an American record of 22'7�" in the long jump. Despite the fact that she fell backward into a sitting position on landing, Anderson's leap is the third best in history, only 3�" short of the world record held by Sigrun Siegl of East Germany.

Five days before her record jump, Anderson had finished first among Americans and third overall in the AAU pentathlon championship in Tempe, Ariz. Immediately after her leap she was boldly talking of a double in the long jump and the pentathlon at the 1980 Olympics. "That jump sent chills all through my body," she said.

One more promising outgrowth of the AAU's plane-ticket policy will be yet another rematch between 110-meter hurdlers Renaldo Nehemiah, who will jet in from Stockholm, and Greg Foster. Their rivalry seems destined to produce a world record sometime this year. In fact, the only thing standing between either of them and a new hurdles record is the hurdles themselves. Two weeks ago in Eugene, UCLA's Foster clipped four of the barriers while edging Nehemiah; nevertheless he missed Alejandro Casa�as' world record of 13.21 by only .01. In Los Angeles it was Nehemiah's turn. He hit the sixth hurdle and the last one, the 10th, while winning in 13.28.

"If Foster had been with me all the way, today might have been a world record," said Nehemiah. "I don't think I was pressured the whole race. You have to have pressure to a point where you have to dive at the finish. I didn't have to dive today." He didn't have to dive because Foster, who finished second in 13.43, hit the first hurdle, another in the middle and clobbered the last one.