Goldengirl

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 excel: 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.’