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IT WAS A PRE-OLYMPIC SHOWDOWN IN REDLANDS

A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. Imagine an all-out Olympian track preview in a non-televised, late-night, all-out race at the University of Redlands.

REDLANDS — Innocent Egbunike was racing Alonzo Babers in one final lap that capped a nine-hour collegiate track & field meet.

Here. In Redlands, spring 1983.

A year later, a little over an hour away, would be the Los Angeles Olympics.

Who could’ve believed that Babers, running for Air Force Academy, or Egbunike, an Nigerian running for Azusa Pacific University, would go up against each other again? Twice, in fact at those L.A. Games.

At Redlands, a meet involving an Oregon State runner, plus 17 small college programs on a dirt track surface, not a soul present could predict that 1984 Olympic 400-meter finale.

No one!

At Redlands, that 4×400 relay involved Babers getting beat to a finish line by Egbunike. A lengthy schedule of track & field events was capped by a pre-Olympic showdown.

A year later, Babers raced for the Americans, Egbunike for the Nigerians – a rematch between those two racers.

Innocent Egbunike, at far right, races to the finish against gold medal-winning Alonzo Babers at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Babers, No. 882, won the 400-meter in a race against Egbunike. The two raced against each other over a year earlier in Redlands, California.

That 1983 spring at smallish University of Redlands, an NCAA Division III member, hosted its annual Track & Field invitational. It attracted a number of small college squads, though that couple of interesting programs showed up.

Azusa Pacific, coached by top dog Terry Franson, would win that year’s NAIA team championship in June, was Redlands. 

So was U.S. Air Force Academy, coached by Ernie Cunliffe.

That Redlands-based meet featured men’s and women’s events – jumping, any throws like a discus, shot put, pole vaults, or plenty of conceivable distance races, plus sprints and relays – took nine hours to complete.

When that meet-concluding relay took place, it was close to 9 p.m. Consider it was 11 a.m. when this meet began!

There they were, Azusa Pacific University squaring off against the U.S. Air Force Academy team in that 4 x 400 men’s finale.

It would be memorable, especially since 1980 Nigerian Olympian, Egbunike, would be racing APU’s anchor lap. 

His opponent, Babers, a lieutenant in the USAF, still holds his school’s indoor 400 (46.86) record from 1982.

Throw this in: In that 1983 season, Babers ran 45.36, his school’s outdoor mark for years. He took fourth (45.51) at the NCAA Division I finals later that June.

Against much easier competition at the NAIA finals, Egbunike sprinted to national championship wins in the 100 (10.34), 200 (20.94) and anchored the winning 4 x 400 relay – John Shalongo, Doug Laisel and Ted Campbell, plus this Nigerian, in 3:09.77.

*****

At the Redlands Invite, Egbunike’s Azusa Pacific teammate Mike Barnett, a future Olympian, ripped off a winning 275-foot javelin mark – still the Ted Runner Stadium record – on that day. 

Oregon State’s Mark Fricker, from nearby Hemet, posted a still-existing 5,000-meter record of 14:09.30 on that 1983 spring date.

USAF’s Bret Hyde, a winner at Redlands, still holds his school’s mark over a 3,000-meter steeplechase (8:31.87). Hyde, incidentally, also placed at the 1984 L.A. Olympics Games.

For good measure, APU sent discus and hammer competitor Christian Okoye, that future NFL “Nigerian Nightmare” with Kansas City. Before that, in this same Redlands stadium, Okoye terrorized that home football team.

There was even a Redlander on the USAF women’s squad, NCAA Division II All-American Laureli Mazik, who won that day and stands on the school’s indoor mile (4:53.9) all-time list at No. 9. 

She’s USAF’s No. 16 outdoors (4:32.09).

All of which is a reminder how relevant this Redlands Invitational seemed at that moment.

There were loads of moments.

*****

By race time, hardly anyone remained inside at that Redlands-based Ted Runner Stadium’s grandstand. 

It was late, after 9 p.m. Interest had long since waned when most events were finalized. Most participating teams had long since departed for their own Southern California campus.

A few teams remained, including Azusa Pacific and Air Force.

When those batons were exchanged for that memorable 4 x 400 anchor lap, Egbunike and Babers were in full stride. That duo raced side by side for their entire 400-meter run.

At the midway mark, Egbunike and Babers were seen slightly bumping during that classic one-on-one duel.

APU’s sprinter edged USAF’s officer, though each runner had plenty of season left – Egbunike in NAIA’s lower level ranks while Babers had top NCAA runners like Bert Cameron and Antonio McKay to square off against later that season.

It was that very season when Babers ran a third leg with Ted Holloway and Todd Scott, Rick Goddard anchoring, setting their school record (3:10.11) – currently the school’s eighth best.

Babers still holds the school mark over 500-meters, a discontinued event in which he posted a 1:01.7.

All of which was just preparation for those 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He came up against Egbunike one more time.

At Redlands, that Nigerian Olympian, escorted to his final handoff by Shalongo, Laisel and Campbell, got his triumph over Babers. Their real race was over a year away. 

*****

In fact, there were two events in L.A.

Inside that Los Angeles Coliseum, both wound up in their open 400-meter finals. There was plenty of buildup, much of the spotlight falling on Antonio McKay, that year’s NCAA champion. 

Babers prevailed over McKay. Egbunike? Finished last in that seven-man finale.

As for the 4 x 400 relay, Babers needed McKay’s help. Those two were mixed in with a lineup that included Ray Armstead and Sunder Nix. The USA won a gold medal ahead of Great Britain (silver).

Third place? A bronze medal? Egbunike? Nigeria? Egbunike and his three running mates, Rotimi Peters, Moses Ugbusien and Sunday Uti showed their world class brilliance.

Unlike that Redlands finale, it was Egbunike against McKay in that final lap. Babers took a 7-meter lead after his third portion of that relay, handing off to McKay.

Beyond that bronze medal, Nigeria got another consolation – an African continental record.

Imagine those men shined at Redlands.

*****

While training for and competing in the 1984 Olympics, Babers held the rank of lieutenant. Just one month after his double-gold performance in Los Angeles, Babers reported to flight training school and began his career as a pilot. His athletic career was over. He was an active duty officer in the United States Air Force from 1983 to 1991, continuing to serve as a member of the Air Force Reserves. As of 2019, he was a 777 pilot for United Airlines.

Egbunike? As head coach of Nigeria’s 2008 Olympic team, he was assistant coach in 1996 and 2000. Egbunike appeared in the winner’s circle again, having coached gold medalist Angelo Taylor, 400-meter Olympic champion in both 2000 and 2008.

Ultimately, Egbunike took over Pasadena City College as its coach – a campus located just a few miles from those Azusa Pacific digs.

Cunliffe, Babers’ coach, chuckled a little, but sounded super serious at Redlands in that 1983 matchup, “He was a reject from football when I first met him,” he said. “I didn’t know who he was.”

Later, Cunliffe discovered exactly that athlete from Montgomery, Alabama .

Quotes at Redlands? Yes, I was there to write it up for a local newspaper. If I’d known they were each headed for Olympics a year later, I’d have stood up for post-race quotes even more.

Babers shook his head, breathing hard after his race. No real quote, except this: “I’ve got to get better.”

Egbunike, a Nigerian, said very little. Nodding, seemingly satisfied, that smallish man said, “I could get better.” I walked away thinking that, perhaps, a Nigerian might not have understood English very well.  I was dead wrong.

Neither man answered questions about that minor bump halfway through that final lap in Redlands.

Me? I had no idea that both of these guys would wind up as 1984 Olympians.

Those two world-class speedsters brought an Olympic showcase to Redlands in March 1983.

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THE BUSTERS NOTCH TWO HOLLYWOOD PARK WINS, BUT LOSE BOTH VICTORS

A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From pro football’s Super Bowl to baseball’s World Series, from dynamic soccer’s World Cup to golf’s and tennis’ U.S. Open, major auto racing, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, more major tennis like Wimbledon, tiny connections to that NBA and a little NHL, major college football, Kentucky Derby, aquatics and Olympic Games, that sparkling little city sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. For sports editor Jeff Lane and myself, we headed out I-10 to find Hollywood Park. – Obrey Brown

Jeff Lane, the sports editor and my one-time classmate at Chabot Junior College up in Hayward, and I were on a mission. Hollywood Park was our destination on July 7, 1979.

Comprising this two-man sports writing staff of a small-city California daily in Redlands, we had something on mind that Saturday. Since our junior college days at Chabot Community College in Hayward, a Bay Area city about 20 miles south of Oakland, we showed up for a local item for our newspaper.

We were as sports-minded as they come – baseball, golf, football, basketball, college and pro, NASCAR, not to mention horse racing, you name it. The main Bay Area tracks were Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows, not to mention a handful of summer fair tracks in Pleasanton, Santa Rosa, Vallejo, Fresno, and Sacramento.

Hollywood Park, though, was much bigger. So much greater thoroughbreds. So many top jockeys. Cash was beyond anyone. Looking for an angle to bring horse racing to that Redlands newspaper, we’d stumbled upon a thoroughbred that couldn’t defy such attention.

It was the only way you could sell such a story to local readership. Our newspaper owners, Frank and William Moore, plus its devoted editor, Richard West, had vested their faith in us to report on local events.

We were the second paper on people’s city doorsteps. The Los Angeles Times, San Bernardino Sun or the Riverside Press Enterprise were regional papers. They’d cover the professionals, major colleges and, of course, they had a horse racing page.

For Jeff and I to make this work in a Redlands newspaper, there had to be a local angle. And we’d found one: The horse was called Old Redlands. There was another horse in that same barn, a filly called Milenka.

LOSING MILENKA IN A CLAIMER

On this particular Saturday, both two of us were on a mission to watch Milenka, entered in the first race at Hollywood Park. Owned by a Redlands couple, Bill and Benita Marie Buster, we were curious to see this race’s outcome.

Milenka won in 1:10.2, ridden by apprentice Patrick Valenzuela – who would go on to have a solid racing career – but just prior to the race, the Busters faced sad news.

Since it was a claiming race, rival owner Patrice Bozick claimed that filly. Milenka outraced Bozick’s own filly, Geeme, a few weeks earlier. The Busters, of Redlands, had just one runner remaining in their racing pedal.

“It took us eleven months or a year to breed her,” Bill Buster said, noting Milenka. “Then another year, a year to train her, and then two and a half months of racing. And in one afternoon, she’s gone.”

Such were the perils of claiming races. You’ve got to sell at the claiming price. In this case, the claim was $20,000. “We’re going to try to get her back,” said Buster.

After being posted at 4-to-1 in that day’s morning line, Milenka wound up as the 2-to-1 favorite, that filly beating Hoisty Jen, ridden by Canadian jockey Sandy Hawley.

Later that day, legendary jockey Willie Shoemaker booted home his 7,700th career win aboard Parsec in the Hollywood Juvenile. By comparison, Old Redlands notched just 10 victories.

A few hours earlier that day, once the Busters’ racing stable had been cut in half, only one thoroughbred, Old Redlands, remained in their barn.

“We’ve dreamed about having a stakes winner,” said Buster, noting that Milenka’s sire, Olympiad King, had been a stakes winner in the early 1960s.

Old Redlands, coming off a seventh-place finish in an allowance at Hollywood Park, had been dropped into a claimer. This thoroughbred had no hopes of winding up in the Kentucky Derby or Hollywood Gold Cup. It won just once in his first 11 races. That win, in December 1979, came at Bay Meadows, a track located about 40 miles south of San Francisco, his final race as a two-year-old.

Buster, whose father was in construction and also a horseman, had bred Old Redlands. That sire was Gummo, out of Judena. Gummo had been a decent sprinter.

A couple weeks before Milenka’s win, getting claimed at Hollywood Park, the Busters watched Old Redlands win a 1 1/16-mile allowance race.

Over a month later, he won a starter allowance race at Del Mar. That Hollywood Park win had lifted the spirits of Busters’ trainer, Clay Brinson, who called him a “useful horse.

“He’ll win a lot of races if we put him in the right ones.”

The Busters lost Milenka, lost Old Redlands, but held onto a yearling filly, named for Buster’s wife, Benita Marie. 

Milenka’s lifetime earnings at $59,600 reached off six wins and a place during four other runs over 25 lifetime track races. She tucked five victories and a second place finish over an eight-race span between that July 21 victory and early January 1980.

Old Redlands rarely saw Southern California tracks again. Shipped up to the Bay Area, where he raced at Golden Gate Fields, just north of Oakland, and also at Bay Meadows down in San Mateo, then into the Pacific Northwest tracks Yakima Meadows and Longacres – both in Washington.

That horse would race 47 times over a six-year stretch – winning ten times with earnings just over $52,000. At one point, Old Redlands won four straight claiming races. By then, that horse had been claimed by another owner.

Old Redlands would have to serve as the honorable mention to Buster’s all-time stable of runners.

What a final race day. The Busters ran two horses – Milenka and Old Redlands – losing both the same day after winning claiming races.

Feature image credit: “hollywood park” by Deidre Woolard licensed under CC BY 2.0.

 

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THERE WERE PLENTY OF REASONS WHY BOB GAILLARD DIDN’T WANT TO TALK

This was part of a series of mini-Redlands Connections. Quick Visits. Magic Johnson and John Wooden showed up at the University of Redlands as part of a Convocation Series. There was a piece on Tom Flores, an NFL Hall of Famer a few decades down the road. Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, former NBA player John Block, legendary high school coach Willie West all showed up. There are others. Cazzie Russell, for instance, came to Redlands with an NCAA Division III basketball team from Savannah, Ga. Russell, out of Michigan, was the NBA’s overall No. 1 draft pick by the New York Knicks in 1966. That guy lived through a remarkable career.

Today’s feature: Former Univ. San Francisco basketball coach Bob Gaillard.

I guess I could understand a few reasons why visiting Lewis & Clark (Ore.) College basketball coach Bob Gaillard wasn’t in all that much of a mood to chat.

He had a basketball team to coach at the University of Redlands’ annual Lee Fulmer Memorial Tournament. For openers, it had been so long since he’d coached at the University of San Francisco.

There wasn’t much he could add to a sad, dramatic and unfavorable tale about a scandal that was so richly embarrassing. At times like those, you hate being a media member. You have to ask, though.

Forty-five minutes before tip-off at Currier Gymnasium, I’d slid in beside him on the Pioneers’ bench. His players were warming up. Can’t remember if L&C was playing Redlands, or not, in the eight-team tournament that night.

Gaillard was in the midst of a 22-year coaching career at that Portland-based campus.

Bob Gaillard
Lewis & Clark College basketball coach Bob Gaillard brought his team to win the Lee Fulmer Memorial Classic on three different occasions. The onetime University of San Francisco coach lived through turbulent times before landing in Portland (photo by Lewis & Clark College).

USF? Maybe there was something the media missed. New developments? A different side we hadn’t thought about?

“Was there any of that?” I asked.

“Look,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “I really don’t want to rehash something like that. There’s nothing new. It happened so far back.”

What my readers might’ve wanted to know was about his USF background. There were people in Redlands that attended USF. He tried to be kind and patient. He was in the midst of a career that left him with 530 coaching triumphs.

Gaillard was at USF from 1968 through 1977, starting about a decade after legendary Bill Russell had left that campus for Boston.

By 1976, he was the Dons’ head coach, a team that included NBA-bound players like Bill Cartwright, Winford Boynes and James Hardy. The Dons were 29-2 that season.

That team, eventually placed on probation, was cited by NCAA officials for academic fraud that included players getting special academic treatment, among other infractions.

Gaillard, voted 1977 AP Coach of the Year, was fired. No way he wanted to relive those moments – good or bad.

In the middle of his refusal, I said, “I really can’t blame you, coach. I always like to stay on top of something that might not have gotten reported. That’s all.”

It was a lousy atmosphere in which to try and rekindle all that negative hype – media coverage, NCAA sanctions, an outlaw nature of the players, everything. In Redlands, a place where academics are highly lauded. Same with, apparently, Lewis & Clark.

It’s quite possible Gaillard had anything directly to do with any of those scandals. What a story it might make for that tiny Redlands readership. Like I said, there were a few local residents that had USF connections. 

Incidentally, folks like that never let me forget, either, especially ones who were on campus during Russell’s years.

Gaillard brought his team from Oregon, flew into Los Angeles, catching a couple vans out to Redlands for this tournament. It was 1992, some 15 years after USF.

“I’d really rather talk about this team,” he said.

Those were good years for the Pioneers, in fact, who were headed for a string of winning seasons. L&C dusted off its NAIA roots for the NCAA a few years after his pre-season trips to Redlands.

Back to USF, 1977. Wasn’t it curious that Gaillard’s Dons carried a 29-1 record into a 32-team NCAA Tournament? Their first-round opponent was none other than Nevada-Las Vegas, coached by Jerry Tarkanian.

Tarkanian also had Redlands connections. It was right around that time, 1977, that Tark himself had started getting negative NCAA attention. A USF-UNLV duel might’ve been the talk of the NCAA offices.

Maybe that’s another reason Gaillard didn’t want to talk.

Tark’s Runnin’ Rebels ran the Dons out that night, 121-95. In fact, USF had been 29-0 heading into their final regular season game against Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish lost to the Dons by 11 in that year’s opening round.

Remember, the NCAA Tournament was just 32 teams in those days.

One season later, 1978, which was Gaillard’s finale at USF, the Dons finished their season 23-6. Gaillard’s record, 165-61, over eight seasons, winning five West Coast Conference championships, reaching the Elite Eight in 1973 and the Sweet 16 in 1978.

He was out of coaching for 11 seasons, he told me, working an advertising gig for baseball’s San Francisco Giants. By 1989, he took over the Pioneers.

As for Lewis & Clark at the 1992 Fulmer Tournament? The Pioneers not only won it, but they came back the following season and repeated as champions.