U.S. Women’s Trials Have Run Into Snags : Marathon: Prize-money inequity, lack of sponsorship are among runners’ concerns.

No one envisioned that the Olympic women’s marathon trials to be run here today would become literally that--a series of trials.

Despite the best efforts of many, the showcase race for American women marathoners has been fraught with problems:

--Lack of sponsorship, forcing the race to be moved from Long Beach to Houston.

--Prize-money inequity. The top three runners will make the Olympic team but each will earn $5,000 less than the male winner of the Houston-Tenneco Marathon, which is run in conjunction with the women’s trials.

--The qualifiers here will each earn $10,000 less than the top three women in the 1988 Olympic women’s marathon trials.

--The total prize purse for the women is nearly one-third that of the men’s trials, to be held April 11 at Columbus, Ohio.

Fingers are being pointed in virtually every direction. For the most part, the elite women, who would rather concentrate on the race than the debate, are keeping quiet.

“It’s a disappointment,” said Lisa Weidenbach of Issaquah, Wash., who has twice finished fourth in the trials. “But I’m sure we’ll all have a lot more to say after the race on Sunday.”

But another runner called the bureaucratic snafus “an embarrassment” and blamed Julie Emmons, chair of the women’s long-distance racing committee and site selection committee for The Athletics Congress, which governs the sport.

“She blew it,” said Laurie Binder of Oakland, who holds the national masters record in the marathon. “We’re going backward. Once again, the women are eating dirt.”

The problems began in the summer of 1989 with the awarding of the bid to the Long Beach Marathon, which will be held Feb. 9. According to Emmons, who praised the Long Beach race, the deteriorating economy doomed the race’s chance of being used for the trials.

“You have to think of the context,” she said. “Essentially, the Gulf War did it. By the winter of 1990-91, it was obvious that Long Beach was going to have a terrible time. If it were great economic times, none of this would come into play.”

Long Beach race director Joe Carlson contacted Emmons and let her know that their original projections regarding sponsorship were not practical. Emmons said the race would have a budget of about $500,000 and that TAC wanted at least $100,000 in prize money.

Mindful of Carlson’s problems in obtaining sponsorship, Emmons set a deadline of March 15, 1991, for Long Beach to come up with the money.

“March 15 came,” Emmons said. “It dropped dead.”

The bidding was reopened, and five groups expressed an interest. Houston, which had not bid originally, was selected. The Houston Marathon is in its 20th year and annually offers one of the biggest purses in the nation.

“It wasn’t like this was a low-bid bid and we grudgingly accepted it,” Emmons said. “We were very enthusiastic in accepting it.”

Houston was awarded the bid in May and immediately began to scramble to raise money to augment its already strained budget. One of the race’s sponsors is Continental Airlines, which the race asked to provide airline tickets for 150.

Houston made an agreement with Continental, then ran into a problem. The U.S. Olympic Committee owns the rights to all the Olympic trials. It has corporate sponsors that are “protected,” that is, even though the USOC isn’t organizing the marathon trials, the trials can’t have any sponsors that conflict with USOC sponsors.

Since the USOC’s official airline is United, Houston could not make a deal with Continental.

Emmons said the USOC didn’t let them know about the conflict until after the contract was signed. Nevertheless, about $100,000 that was to be used for prize money had to be rerouted to pay for transportation of the 90 runners, dozens of TAC officials and others.

That made the prize money modest, to say the least. The top three finishers, who will gain spots on the Olympic team, will also win $20,000 each. The money drops to $5,000 for fourth place and to $1,000 for 10th place.

The total purse for the women is $77,500.

The winner of the open men’s division of the Houston Marathon will earn $25,000, and the men’s purse is $85,000.

Many of the women here resent that. They grow even more angry when they are reminded of the 1988 Olympic trials, the first time prize money was awarded at a marathon trial. Four years ago, the first three women earned $30,000 apiece and prize money was awarded to 30th place.

“We were spoiled in 1988,” Weidenbach said.

Making matters worse is that for the men’s trials in Columbus there is $280,000 in total prize money. The top three runners will earn $56,000, $46,000 and $36,000, with money awarded to 20th place.

Both are Olympic trials. Both are TAC-sanctioned events. Why the discrepancy?

According to Emmons, it’s timing.

“I am delighted for the men,” she said. “But they made their deal in 1988. I can’t begrudge them anything. I’m sorry I couldn’t do a better job for the women. It’s not Houston’s fault . . . Houston has done everything possible. I wish that the whole thing had happened in a different climate. If we were negotiating in ‘88, we would have made a very different deal. I can’t tell you how different it is out there now.”

At a news conference Friday, Emmons interrupted an athletes’ interview session and told the media that she accepted full blame for the problems, acknowledging that some of the athletes are grumbling.

Adding to the embarrassment were the problems with television. Tim Murphy, who is producing the telecast, said the scheduling delays made it difficult to sell commercial air time.

So does the conflict with the Super Bowl.

“We were up against the Super Bowl,” he said. “We found that companies were interested in a women’s race. They were for it, then they’d send it to their ad agencies. The agencies said, ‘Are you stupid? Super Bowl Sunday?’ We failed. We couldn’t sell it.”

Murphy said he couldn’t sell enough ads to cover production costs of $80,000 and justify live coverage. But he did make a deal with ESPN, which will broadcast the race on Feb. 16.

“I’m happy that at least it’s on TV,” Murphy said. “But it’s not what it should be. It deserves live coverage.”