In 1956, I took a four-engine propeller airplane from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles to spend the summer with relatives.

A cousin took me to the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials at the LA Coliseum. Watching future Olympic champions Tom Courtney, Bobby Morrow and Lee Calhoun sparked a love of the sport that has endured for 44 years.

I've attended Olympics in Munich, Montreal and Los Angeles. I've filled my head with statistics and hieroglyphics peculiar to the sport. I completed seven marathons.

And I've written about some of the sport's greatest athletes. From sprinter Wilma Rudolph coming back from having an out-of-wedlock baby as a teen-ager to winning three gold medals at the 1960 Olympics to Peter Snell, New Zealand's triple gold medal-winning distance runner, selling all his possessions to move to the United States to study to be a doctor.

It's an Olympic year. The trials to select a U.S. track team are due to begin Friday in Sacramento. The swiftest and strongest will be sent to Sydney to compete at the Games in September.

But the athletics I've loved so much seems about as obsolete in the United States as the propeller plane that took me to my first meet 44 years ago.

Public interest has dwindled, forcing the cancellation of indoor and outdoor meets in Los Angeles, Dallas and many other cities. The sport has its Super Bowl -- the Olympics -- but little else to create headlines.

The sport has a few American stars -- Michael Johnson, Maurice Greene and Marion Jones. They're rarely seen in person in America and known mostly by their results in agate type.

The sport that produced such noble athletes as Jesse Owens, Billy Mills and Al Oerter receives less television time than the sport of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.

The nation that turned out the first-, fourth- and ninth-place finishers in the marathon at the 1972 Olympics could qualify just one man to run the event in Australia.

Millions of American run for fitness, yet they seem to have little interest in watching the best run at invitational and college meets.

Track is haunted by the specter of performance-enhancing drugs. Many athletes fall under suspicion even though they pass the drug tests given at big meets and during the training period.

Corporate sponsors don't want their names associated with the sport. Mobil pulled out as the major backer of the sport in the United States. Sunkist Growers and Pepsi withdrew support for indoor and outdoor meets in Los Angeles.

The cruelest irony in the decline of track is that the amateur rules that forced Owens to race horses and many other stars out of the sport after a few years are dead.

Athletes now have a chance to make a handsome living running, throwing and jumping. Few Americans do.

What went wrong? Everyone deserves a share of the blame, including the athletes.

The oppressive, authoritarian moguls who used the amateur rules to control the athletes and were spendthrifts with the sport's rich legacy deserve the most blame. They not only held on to the old rules too long but continued to run the sport in America after athletes were allowed to openly make a buck.

The end of the Cold War -- and the resulting loss of a rivalry with the Soviet Union -- hurt. Russian high jumper Valeriy Brumel was an enemy the public could admire and respect, perhaps even love. He and his team's dual meets in America drew huge crowds to Stanford and the Coliseum.

African distance runner Kipchoge Keino brought a warm personality to America. Keino was honored as a Sportsman of the Year for his humanitarian work in Kenya and had a compelling rivalry with American Jim Ryun.

I've come to realize that track is a very difficult sport to watch. Athletes may be bigger, faster and stronger, but spectators are not necessarily more observant, keenly interested and patient. They've become spoiled by their big-screen televisions and stadium replay scoreboards.

There are no replay screens where most track meets are held, but there will be one at the trials in Sacramento.

Baseball has coped with similar problems by building new, more intimate stadia, instituting inter-league play and expanding the postseason.

Track hurts itself because it is peculiar among sports in that it actually attempts to enforce its rules. A triple jumper actually takes only three jumps. An NBA player can take one, two, three or four steps to the hoop without being cited for traveling.

There's nothing more frustrating for a fan than to see a sprinter run a really fast race and have a record nullified by a too-strong, aiding wind.

Where track really gets itself in trouble with the public is in its attempt to enforce its drug rules. Some like sprinter Ben Johnson get caught. Other runners with similarly overdeveloped upper bodies escape detection.

Olympic gold medal champion shot putter Randy Barnes is on suspension for testing positive for using androstenedione, while home run champion Mark McGwire, who admittedly used the muscle-building substance, is reaping millions.

Longtime Los Angeles track promoter Al Franken, who once received three life suspensions for amateur rules violations, believes enforcement of drug rules should be abandoned. He said it's like trying to enforce Prohibition.

Great athletes make track compelling. Some like Olympic champion 400-meter hurdler Glenn Davis and sprinter Henry Carr had to give up the sport to try pro football to make a living. Davis, who won three gold medals, went on to be a school teacher.

Now, athletes can make millions but don't after Olympic success. Sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, 400-meter hurdler Kevin Young and triple jumper Kenny Harrison are examples of athletes who retire or fade when their earning power is at its peak. What is the public to think?

Year-round participation in youth sports like football and basketball has hurt track badly. Basketball stars Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain once participated in track. Now, the travel basketball circuit doesn't allow the time.

When O.J. Simpson went to USC, football coach John McKay cut him loose from spring practice to run track. He ran on a world record 440-yard relay team in 1967. Now, football coaches are more reluctant to free up their athletes for track.

A running track around a football field was like a wedding band of the two sports that require speed and strength. Now, the track has been torn out at the Ohio State Stadium, where Owens once ran, and at other fields like the Coliseum and Rose Bowl.

College track used to provide the connection between athletes and the public, but the disappearance of so many scholarships because of Title IX has cost the sport dearly. High school track still has that connection, and the California state championships draw well at Cerritos College and in Sacramento.

As track has fallen deeper into a hole in the United States, the attitude of the international governing body has changed. The International Amateur Athletic Federation, which cheated American Bob Seagren out of a potential gold medal in the pole vault by not allowing him to use his own pole at the 1972 Games, now changes rules to help Americans.

The IAAF recognizes where the large television payday is. When sprinter Johnson was hurt in the match race with Donovan Bailey, the IAAF quickly altered its rules so Johnson and other defending champions could perform at the 1997 world championships.

To save the sport in the United States would require a nearly miraculous effort. The athletes who win gold medals in Sydney would have to perform in the United States in 2001 for little or no appearance fees. They would have to reconnect the sport with the fans.

NBA players once accepted a strict salary cap. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan did the rest.