Dean Juipe: LVIM quick but world record safe

Friday, Feb. 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

IT'S A RECORD that has stood for an abnormally long time, resisting the trend of falling as bigger, better and faster athletes come along.

On the books since April 17, 1988, the world's marathon record will likely survive Sunday's 31st running of the Las Vegas International Marathon as well. Yet the LVIM course on the old Los Angeles Highway between Jean and Vacation Village is lightning fast and if the field were a little stronger, the mark set by Ethopia's Belayneh Dinsamo nine years ago in the Netherlands would actually be in jeopardy.

"We could have a record if we offered the kind of prize money and incentives it would take to get the world's greatest runners here," said LVIM director Al Boka. "Right now, we're not even near that."

Besides, Boka said, if a world record was established on the current LVIM course, an asterisk would be attached "because the run is a little too much downhill."

Dinsamo's record is starting to take on a Bob Beamon-like quality, standing for almost a decade despite the fact thousands of people take a stab at it almost every week of the year. The particulars: Running in Rotterdam, Dinsamo covered the standard marathon course of 26 miles, 385 yards in 2 hours, 6 minutes and 50 seconds.

That was 22 seconds better than the previous world record, held by Portugal's Carlos Lopes, which had stood for three years and was achieved on the exact same course.

"I don't understand the physiology of it all, but what Dinsamo did that day was phenomenal," Boka said. "Rotterdam is a great world-record course because it's at sea level and it's flat as a table, but, even with that, his time was incredibly fast."

Dinsamo's tenure as the marathon record holder is approaching that of Derrick Clayton, whose world-best time stood for 12 years (and throughout the 1970s).

"It'll go in the next couple of years," Boka predicted of Dinsamo's record. "It's been around too long. When the right conditions come along -- a race offering the right incentives and a race day with no wind -- it'll fall."

Boka says the LVIM record is also tenuous -- "soft," he called it -- and that Frank Plasso's 1986 standard of 2:12:37 could be snapped Sunday. "We do have one guy in the field who can certainly beat it," Boka said, referring to Russia's Andrey Kkuznetsov, who has a personal best time of 2:12:27.

(The women's world-record holder, Norway's Ingrid Kristiansen, hasn't been displaced since 1985 when she ran the London Marathon in 2:21:06. The leading entrant in this year's LVIM, Lyobov Klotchko of the Ukraine, has a personal best of 2:30.30.)

Also apt to push Kkuznetsov is the LVIM defending champion, Zoltan Holba of Hungary, who was running very strong in the '96 race until pulling far enough ahead that he virtually walked in the final 1.2 miles to finish at 2:17:11. He had Plasso's mark in his sights until easing off the accelerator after his competition had dropped back.

But he was nowhere near Dinsamo's dust-covered mark.