TRACK & FIELD

Richard Tuwei of Washington state and Kenya (No. 835) won the steeplechase at the NCAA championships in Provo, Utah, but the biggest splash-as usual—was made by a slight Tanzanian of undetermined age. Suleiman Nyambui, who ran for team champion Texas-El Paso, won the 14th and 15th NCAA titles of his career with victories in the 10,000 and 5,000 meters. Other noteworthy 1982 doubles: Carl Lewis had the year's best performances in the long jump (28'9") and the 100 meters (10.00); Alberto Salazar scored a double double, winning narrow marathon victories in Boston and New York and setting American records in the 5,000 and 10,000; and Britain's Daley Thompson twice set world records in the decathlon. But perhaps the most inspiriting star of all was Mary Decker Tabb, who set seven world records (indoors and out) in 1982—and that after being sidelined for 16 months with various leg injuries. The ranks of the halt and the lame were swollen with the addition of 400-meter hurdle world record holder Edwin Moses, who sat out the season with leg problems of his own, and ace milers Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett, whose long-awaited duels never came off. Coe, after losing in the European Championships to West German Hans-Peter Ferner, contracted mono and nursed a stress fracture for much of the summer; Ovett impaled his leg on a fence post while training.

Decker Tabb showed her heels to the field in TAC's 1,500 meters.

Lewis soared an estimated 30 feet or better at Indianapolis, but the jump was ruled foul. Ramona Pagel's shot try was more down to earth.

Bob Roggy threw the javelin 300 feet or more a record eight times, once for a U.S. mark of 314'4".

The U.S.S.R.'s Olga Dvirna, who never lost at 1,500, was No. 1, hands down.

Scotland's Allan Wells (left) gave it his all in the Commonwealth Games 200, to finish in a dead heat with Mike McFarlane. West German Ulrike Meyfarth flopped to a record 6'7½".

Cameron Sharp (594) of Scotland won this 100-meter semifinal heat at the Commonwealth Games, but Wells, his countryman, took the final.

SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR

Steve Scott had just considerably improved his own American record in the mile, yet there he was, sitting all alone in his hotel room in Oslo last July, ruing the race. He had run a 3:47.69, just .36 off Sebastian Coe's world mark, but those 36-hundredths haunted him. Scott took out a stopwatch and tried to tick off .36. "It was nothing," he said. "Not even a step." And so went the year for Americans in track and field, with bittersweet nothings keeping considerable somethings from becoming world records. A number of superlative U.S. efforts fell just short: Carl Lewis, after leaping 28'9" at the National Sports Festival in Indianapolis, could call it only the second-longest jump of all time—behind Bob Beamon's 29'2½", a record once thought to be unapproachable. Renaldo (Skeets) Nehemiah set world indoor records in the 50-and 60-yard high hurdles, auguring improvements on his world mark during the outdoor season, but then Nehemiah defected to pro football before the summer began. Bob Roggy heaved the javelin more than 300 feet eight times during the year—no one else has done that in a career-yet could only claim an American record (though he broke the second oldest U.S. field mark on the books, Mark Murro's 12-year-old 300 feet even). And Dave Volz, who set an American outdoor pole-vault mark, strained for—but missed by 2½ inches—Vladimir Polyakov's world record of 19'¾". Europeans, on the other hand, set or tied 19 world outdoor marks. Three of them fell with an emphatic thud. East Germany's Marita Koch, clocking 48.16 for 400 meters, lopped nearly half a second off her three-year-old women's record. David Moorcroft of Britain (page 68) ran a 13:00.42 to shatter Henry Rono's world record in the 5,000. And, in the space of a few minutes on a hot August night in Bucharest, two different women bettered the world record in the long jump. Romania's Anisoara Cusmir leaped 23'5½", only to see her compatriot, Vali Ionescu, improve that mark by two inches. Two giant leaps for women...but still that one small step to be made by Steve Scott.

Ceci Hopp and PattiSue Plumer grasp and gasp after finishing 1-2 in the NCAA 3,000.

ELEVEN PHOTOS