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Show by Jim .Hurray Mtmiriray mi pnnit Dwight Stones gives voice to upcoming Olympics When the 30-year-old orator, Dwight Stones, leaped to an American-record height of 7 feet 8 inches last month, a lot of people were surprised. Not that he could jump that high, but that he could shut up that long. Those who feared that the 1984 Olympics, because of the boycott, would be the Silent Olympics, can now rest easy. Track and field's official mouthpiece is safely in the Games. The calliope is in the circus. Journalists the world over can heave their hats in the air and make plans for early dinners. The dreaded "no comment" is nowhere to be heard. That rumble you hear from the high jump pits is that most welcome of notes quotes. Dwight is playing our song. Stones would have to join a monastery for a year to be toned down to mere "loquacious." Calling him loquacious is like calling Dolly Parton "curved." If Dwight never says another word, he'll finish 20 million lifetime ahead of William Jennings Bryan. Newsmen can now go to bed confident that they'll have a surfeit of headline stories to choose from in the Games. "Stones Blasts Track." "Stones Terms Officials 'Childish.' " "Stones Blasts LA." "Stones Blasts Weather." "Stones Blasts TV." "Stones Blasts Sunsets." You name it, Dwight will have an opinion on it. He does not believe that athletes should be seen and not heard. If he has a choice, he'll opt for heard. You may recall that when Stones was safely in the field to make the team after preliminary qualifying, he was not content with this state of affairs. He lobbied loudly (he never lobbies any other way) for a passel of the jumpers, eliminated under the rules, to be reinstated. Never mind the complicated reasons. Dwight doesn't particularly need reasons. The point is, he had two choices. He could accept the status quo which worked to his advantage because it reduced the number of athletes he would have to beat in the finals. Or he could make waves also headlines. If you know Stones, you know that he didn't hesitate. Against his own enlightened self-interest, he opted for the soapbox. This wasn't the first time his tongue had put him in . peril of not winning a gold medal. He accomplished that not-inconsiderable feat at Montreal in 1976. He was the world record-holder and a favorite to win the jump in a Cakewalk until he decided to load some pressure on himself. He did this by flying home to California to train and by unloading some unsolicited opinions on the host country, Canada. First, he lambasted the living quarters at the Olympic Village. Next, turning his attention to architecture, he indicated that he considered it a personal affront that the Canadians had not completed 1 the domed retractable roof. He even pinpointed the blame. Not only Canadians, but "French Canadians." They were "rude," he announced. Dwight thus ensured that his medal efforts would be conducted in a chorus of hostility, ill will and boos. He finished third in the competition, his second successive bronze medal. He also proved to have been prescient. Rain, dumped on the runway from that undomed roof, spoiled his long run-up. Five davs later, in an atmosphere of sympathy and cheers in Philadelphia, Stones set a world record almost three inches higher than the winning jump at Montreal. He is an absolutely superb athlete. If you had a license to build yourself a high jumper, you could not improve on the conformation of Dwight Stones. Over 6 feet 5, long-legged, slim-waisted, graceful and lithe, he goes over a bar like a swan over a pond. Flawlessly, effortlessly. "I never get injured, I just don't get hurt, period," Dwight told the assembled press after his American-record American-record jump. "I know how to train properly. I know what to do and how to do it. That's the reason I can break the American record 12 years after I broke the world record." He said his form is due to a regimen of "underground" preparation at Ambassador College in Pasadena. "Underground" is an unaccustomed spot for Stones, who is not your basic subterranean type, hardly your AU-American mole. A mountaintop is more his style. Even if you're hard of hearing, you can recognize him in a crowd by the fine spray emanating from his lips like chronic coastal dew. He's a man who breaks world records on a Tartan track and a sound track with equal skiU and ease, the only man who ever talked himself out of a gold medal and into a suspension the same year (he blithely announced that the "track club" into which funds were being funneled consisted of his mother and himself). His best chance for a medal in this year's Games against the great Chinese jumper Zhu Jianhua seems to be if he gets an injury. Not to his ankle, to his larynx. If that remains in Olympian form, Stones' high jump form may be irrelevant. One thing is sure: The Chinese jumper will find him highly scrutable. Dwight may even tell him what he's doing wrong if he misses a height or two. Dwight specializes in telling people what they're doing wrong. Even governments. High jumping is for his spare time. A hobby, not a career. The career is oratory. (c) 1984, Los Angeles Times. |