At twenty-two, Ursula is ready for Moscow. Her teasing gray-blue eyes, cutely bobbed brown hair and svelte figure may not accord with stereotypes of Eastern-bloc athletes, but her progress places her emphatically in the tradition of East Germany’s former sprint queen, the powerful Renate Stecher. Over the last three years, Ursula has headed the world rankings for the 100- and 200-metre dash events. In 1978, she zipped to a convincing double in the European Cup Final. Since then she has not lost a race. And she has got faster each year. Going into 1980, she looked the undisputed claimant for Olympic gold.
Now, just weeks from the Games, has emerged a threat to Ursula’s ten-year plan. It happened in the most unlikely way. Last winter, while Ursula was grinding out her four-hour schedule of sprint training and weightlifting in one of Berlin’s newest indoor sportsdromes, a retired California professor was urging his daughter to take up some physical activity. ‘It’s not good for an eighteen-year-old to spend all her time around the house,’ Bill Serafin told blond Goldine. ‘You should try getting some exercise. Like jogging.’
To please her pa, Goldine put on some sneakers and took a turn around the Bakersfield block where they live. She didn’t easily identify as one of the Jogging Generation, so her progress was brisker than gurus of the jog would recommend for a maiden run. She stretched her legs and went. And she enjoyed it. ‘This could be fun,’ she told her father when she got home. ‘But I’d like to run on a track, not around the block.’
Next afternoon, Goldine made a circuit of the Bakersfield College Stadium. And another. At the end of the week she tried a 100-metre dash. Someone nearby was holding a stopwatch. ‘Get a coach for that kid, and she could run the Olympics,’ he told Prof Serafin.
So they did. They hired Pete Klugman, former coach to the U.S. Olympic squad. ‘Soon as I saw Goldine, I knew she was a natural,’ says Klugman. ‘She had everything: stride length, style and basic speed. All I had to teach her was technique.’
He had seven months for that. In East Germany, Goldine’s gift for running would have been spotted in junior school, shaped and honed to perfection over years. Track in America is a more haphazard affair. Prompted by Klugman, Goldine decided to go for broke on the Olympics, training in secret, with the U.S. Trials in July as a deadline. She had just one competitive outing before that, at a San Diego club meet. She won the 100, 200 and 400 metres in top-class times. Experts who had never heard of Goldine Serafin queried the timekeeping.
At the Trials in Eugene last month, the Bakersfield blonde posted her challenge to Ursula Krüll, setting new U.S. records in Ursula’s pet events, the 100 and 200 metres. For the hell of it, she also entered and qualified for the Olympic team in the 400 metres, finishing third. No U.S. girl has ever run all three sprint events at one Games.
Tall, elegant-featured Goldine, with sparkling blue eyes, pink cheeks and a sharp turn of conversation, is dismissive of her Eugene performances. ‘It’s Moscow that counts,’ she says, sighing. ‘I’m very inexperienced. I’ll run the best I can for America, but don’t overdo the buildup, will you? I’d rather surprise people than disappoint them.’ But she is losing no sleep over the clash with Ursula Krüll. ‘I haven’t had time to study other girls’ form. Krüll is just a name to me. It might as well be Schmidt, or anything else. Somebody has to be top girl in East Germany. It’s a system I’m running against more than any one girl.’
The system is geared to producing champions. Unlike the Russians, whose performances in track have shown a marked decline since the Soviet republics gained more autonomy in sports development, the East Germans bring their superstars together for intensive training and competition. At the Leipzig College of Physical Education, where Ursula Krüll graduated from school, the pick of German athletes train under the guidance of professional coaches to a program based on extensive scientific research into physiological development. There are strong incentives to exceclass="underline" for students, larger cash grants for better performances, and for coaches, extensions of their contracts if their charges win championships. ‘I have kept the same coaches for a long time,’ says Ursula.
If Goldine Serafin has a system, it is based strictly on free enterprise. Women’s track is a backwater in the U.S.A. Few girls persist with any kind of sport after leaving high school. Diver Micki King, who took the gold medal for springboard in the Munich Olympics, put it like this: ‘We’re mystery people. We have our place in the sun once every four years, and then we disappear.’
For her place in the sun, Goldine is presently training up to four hours a day to coach Klugman’s schedule. What is her incentive? ‘It’s the joy of running,’ she explains. ‘If I’d been made to do it since I was a kid in kindergarten, I think the fun might have gone out of it by now. Put me down as a souped-up jogger. That’s all I am.’
Sportswriters in Olympic year can be forgiven for seeing it differently. U.S. women’s sprinting has been dominated by black girls — Wilma Rudolph and Wyomia Tyus the most brilliant — since the Olympics recommenced after World War II. The last white American of top class was 1936 Olympic champion Helen Stephens. A fast blonde may be a cliché, but she’s rare enough in reality to rate star treatment in 1980. Since her breakthrough in Eugene, Goldine’s story has made the pages of almost every publication except the Harvard Business Review. And her tall, shapely figure (36-24-36) is becoming as familiar as the smiles of the presidential candidates.
While Goldine adapts to the pressures of the media, Ursula in Berlin bears the ballyhoo of Olympic year with the cool of a seasoned campaigner. Since her European Cup triumphs a year ago, she has taken over as East Germany’s most glamourous sportsgirl. Previous incumbents include the beautiful (and since twice-married) blond diver Ingrid Krämer, a triple gold medalist, and attractive gymnast Karen Janz, who robbed Olga Korbut and comrades of two gold medals in the Munich Olympics. Any idea that glamour has no place in a Communist society is given the lie by pinup posters of Ursula, in tracksuit, that share many a German bedroom wall with Marx and Lenin. Her running shorts are cut with a dash that beats all records. ‘If you have good legs, it does no harm to show them,’ she explains in a highly serious tone. ‘Running is kind to my legs. It keeps them in shape. Skiing and cycle racing aren’t so good. If I was a cyclist, maybe I would wear less revealing shorts.’ She still admitted slight irritation at the maneuvers of our cameraman. ‘Always the back view. What is it about my butt? People say I turn my back on the camera deliberately, but I don’t. I’m conscious of my body, but only important things, like knee lift and leg cadence.’