For Seoul Win, Samuelson Will Need Another Miracle

When Joan Benoit won the women’s Olympic marathon trial in 1984, only 17 days after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery--and later went on to take the gold in Los Angeles in the inaugural Olympic women’s marathon--it was labeled a miracle.

This year, with the women’s Olympic marathon trial in Pittsburgh just four weeks away, Benoit--now Joan Samuelson--says she apparently may have run out of miracles.

“It would take almost an even bigger miracle than it took in ‘84,” Samuelson told The Times last week. “And I just don’t think it’s there.”

Samuelson, who has not raced seriously for more than two years, has been attempting to come back since the birth of her first child last October, daughter Abigail Webb Samuelson. She has been plagued by nagging physical problems which have cost her two months of training.

It is extremely unlikely she can be ready for the May 1 race.

“If things all of a sudden go wow in the next two weeks, I’d consider running the trial, but I don’t think they will,” she said.

She is not likely to pull off the same kind of feat this Olympic year as she did during the last. For one thing, Samuelson was in peak condition in 1984 just before she injured her knee.

Now, since late January, she has been suffering debilitating back pain, which only recently eased enough for her to begin running again.

The back trouble has been compounded by a longtime mechanical imbalance caused by her shorter right leg, broken in a skiing accident when she was a sophomore in high school. For years, her left leg has had to compensate, and this past year the weakness in that leg has been worse.

“With only four weeks left, I’m just running out of time,” she said. She sighed. “There are other things in life, you know,” she said.

She has not totally abandoned the idea of competing in Seoul, however. The 1988 Games will have a women’s 10,000-meter event for the first time in history, and she is considering running in the track and field trials in July at Indianapolis. “It’s a possibility,” she said.

That would give her the additional time she needs--and for an event of 6.2 miles, one that exacts much less of a lingering physical toll on the body than a 26.2-mile marathon. However, she acknowledged: “I don’t think I have a shot at medaling in the 10, although I have a shot at making the team. My best chances . . . of medaling are in the marathon.”

She continues to be fueled by her one remaining dream to be the first woman to break 2 hours 20 minutes in the marathon. She clocked her best (2:21:21) in October of 1985 in Chicago, the last time she ran a marathon.

The world record (2:21:06) is owned by Norwegian Ingrid Kristiansen, set in the 1985 London Marathon.

“That 2:20 is out there, driving me still, and Seoul is not the place to do it,” Samuelson said earlier this winter. “Maybe my best shot at breaking 2:20 is if I didn’t make the (Olympic) team and didn’t go to Seoul, and if I ran a marathon in the fall. That might be the perfect thing--let the top marathoners run the Olympic race without me. I’ll train through it and show up in New York in the fall.”