WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : Judge Davies Still Feels Chased by Sharks

Although Forbes Carlile was educated as a physiologist, his work with the mind distinguished him from other Australian swimming coaches. According to Australian Olympian Dawn Fraser’s 1965 autobiography, Carlile hypnotized his swimmers, often deluding them into believing they were being chased by sharks.

Still active in the sport internationally after four decades as a coach, Carlile occasionally visits Los Angeles, where he stays with John G. Davies.

Davies, one of the early products of the Australian swim program that began to emerge in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, settled here after graduating from UCLA’s law school and became an entertainment lawyer. But he did not need a hypnotic session with his longtime friend last week to feel the sharks nipping at his briefs.

Now a U.S. district judge, Davies handed down the controversial 30-month prison sentences Wednesday to policemen Laurence Powell and Stacy Koon for violating Rodney King’s civil rights.

That was the most media attention Davies had received since 1952, when he won the gold medal in the 200-meter breaststroke in the Olympic Games at Helsinki.

He almost won a bronze medal in the same event four years earlier. Although the officials with the stopwatches gave him a time that was 2/10ths of a second faster than that of the third-place finisher, the United States’ Robert Sohl, the judge in charge of placements, ruled that Davies touched the wall after Sohl.

*

Two hours 15 minutes of glory await Disney Channel viewers next Sunday night, when the series of Bud Greenspan Olympic films resumes with profiles from the 1992 Summer Games at Barcelona.

Among the athletes featured in the latest “16 Days of Glory” is U.S. gymnast Trent Dimas, who astonished his competitors by winning a gold medal on the high bar. He was so moved by the filmed account of his Olympic moment that he has decided to attempt to recapture it in 1996 at Atlanta.

Whenever training seems like too much of a drain, he said he will screen Greenspan’s film for inspiration. “This is motivation enough to keep going,” Dimas said.

*

Another athlete featured in Greenspan’s film, Evelyn Ashford, has had no second thoughts about her decision to retire. The 36-year-old veteran of four Olympics ran competitively for the last time on Aug. 1 at Sapporo, Japan.

In a 100-meter competition arranged to honor her, she won. All she promised beforehand was to break 12 seconds. She did, finishing in 11.55. The world record she held for almost four years after setting it in 1984 was 10.76.

*

Now that the International Olympic Committee has agreed to open the 1996 Olympics on a Friday night instead of a Saturday, will Greenspan call his film from Atlanta “17 Days of Glory?”

Adding a day to the front end of the schedule was one concession the IOC made to drive up the price in bidding among U.S. television networks for rights to the Atlanta Games.

Another was to study the possibility of shuffling the schedule so that there is more competition in women’s gymnastics and swimming during the final week.

When those sports wound down after the first week at Barcelona, so did NBC’s ratings. The network’s executives believe that is because women were not as interested in track and field and boxing, which dominated the second week.

Despite a $100-million loss on its $401-million investment in 1992, NBC paid a record $456 million for the rights to the Atlanta Games.

*

Upset because the International Amateur Athletic Federation offers no prize money in track and field’s World Championships, which open Friday at Stuttgart, Germany, athletes considered organizing a boycott. After they backed down, the IAAF offered a Mercedes to each winner.

But Algeria’s Noureddine Morceli, ranked No. 1 in the world last year in the 1,500 meters, has a car. He wants money. Unless the IAAF agrees to pay him, he said last week he is bypassing Stuttgart.

Also out of the meet is Canada’s Mark McKoy, the 1992 Olympic 110-meter hurdles champion. When he refused to return home from the European Grand Prix circuit to compete in the national championships, Canadian officials refused to consider him for a place on the team.

*

The 1992 Olympics at Barcelona ended one year ago today, leaving behind a $1.4-billion debt. That breaks Montreal’s record debt of $1 billion, which its citizens, 17 years after the Summer Olympics were held there, continue to pay off. Barcelona expects to be paying for its Olympics until 2009.

As in Montreal, most expenditures in Barcelona were directed toward massive urban renewal projects, which eventually would have been necessary. But they were undertaken sooner, and all at once, because of the Olympics.

People in Barcelona seem to appreciate the improvements in their city, especially the ring road that has alleviated gridlock. That does not mean they like paying for them. According to the Associated Press, about 5,000 angry merchants recently demonstrated at City Hall because of a 30% increase in a business tax.