Relays pits US versus the world

Although the folks at home might miss out on the flavor of the nation's loudest, most raucous track and field event, a national television audience will get a chance to watch action from the 106th Penn Relays. USA Track and Field announced last Wednesday a first-ever event that will pit America's finest track athletes against top international competition in a relays-only format. Using the Saturday of Penn Relays as a staging ground, ESPN will televise a series of intercontinental battles -- ominously titled "USA vs. The World -- on Sunday, April 30 from 4 to 5 p.m. Michael Johnson, Marion Jones, Maurice Greene, Inger Miller and Gail Devers will headline the event, which will feature five relays of international importance: the men's and women's 4x100 meters, the men's and women's 4x400 and the men's 4x1500. It's the hope of USATF that in this, an Olympic year, the tape-delay broadcast will prime the American public for the Sydney Games in September. "USA vs. The World is a new concept for our sport," USATF CEO and track luminary Craig Masback said in a press release last week. "With its deep heritage and 40,000-spectator crowds, the Penn Relays provides an ideal setting. It is a tremendous opportunity for our athletes." The USA vs. The World format is not only a convenient way for the Carnival to get back on the tube. It's also being billed as an opportunity for America's track athletes to begin the stretch run of preparation for the Summer Olympics in September. Two USA teams will enter into each of the featured relays. "The concept is basically to have the Relays serve as a U.S. Olympic training sight for the relay teams," Penn Relays Director Dave Johnson said at a press conference last week. In the pool for the 4x400 are Tyree Washington, Antonio Pettigrew and Michael Johnson, who were all part of the USA quartet that set a world record in the event in 1998. Pettigrew also ran the second leg of an Adidas team that won the 4x400 in 1999 at the Relays. Veterans Jerome Davis, Angelo Taylor and Calvin Harrison will also be on hand at Franklin Field to face teams from Jamaica, the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago. Michael Johnson, whose wife is very close to giving birth, is clearly in tip-top shape this spring. In his very first race of the season, the defending Olympic champion ran the fourth-fastest time in the 200 in history. The women 4x400 teams at Penn look like definite challengers for the gold Down Under. Shanelle Porter, national indoor 400 champion Suziann Reid, Kim Graham, Michelle Collins, 1996 Olympic 400 hurdles bronze medalist Tonja Buford Baily and former world champ Jearl Miles Clark will all appear on 33rd Street. In the 4x100 races, the Americans will turn hold the crowd captive as well. World record holder Green leads a pool that includes 1996 4x100 silver medalists Jon Drummond, Tim Montgomery and Tim Harden. On the female side, the U.S. will boast Devers and her 1996 Olympic teammates Chryste Gaines, Inger Miller and two-time world champion Marion Jones. With the financial support of GMC Envoy, Nike and the U.S. Air Force, this event brings the Relays back to television after a one-year hiatus. CBS televised portions of the Carnival in a two-hour, tape-delay special in 1996, '97 and '98, but the network's contract with the Relays expired two years ago. Last year, there was no TV coverage of the event, and the three-year stint for CBS marked only the second time that the Relays had been televised in their vaunted history. In 1966, ABC featured segments of the Philadelphia event in the very first telecast of Wide World of Sports.