Roger's Kingdom Started On Gridiron -- Top Hurdler's World Not Confined To Track

If Roger Kingdom's car hadn't been impounded when he was at the University of Pittsburgh, he might be in the National Football League instead of the Goodwill Games as the world's No. 1 high hurdler.

Kingdom was a defensive back who arrived from his Georgia home for his sophomore season driving a tank of a car. The heap wouldn't fit into small parking places, and Kingdom was nonchalant about parking it. He piled up tickets the way Tony Dorsett used to gain yardage for Pitt.

When the fine total reached $600, the car was impounded. A sympathetic judge reduced the amount to $200, and Kingdom's mother wired him money to retrieve it before the city could sell it.

On retrieval day, Kingdom got permission from a Pitt assistant to be late to practice. When he showed up at practice, he was told another player had taken his job on the first unit. The demotion remained in effect the rest of the season, and Kingdom went out for indoor track to make a name for himself.

``I was so frustrated and so angry, I was determined to show someone my ability,'' Kingdom said.

The rest is history. He redshirted the next football season and track became his passion. Two Olympic gold medals in the 110-meter high hurdles and the world record of 12.92, set in Zurich, Switzerland, last summer, attest to his ability.

Kingdom, who considers himself as good an athlete as Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan, was named top male competitor of 1989 by Track and Field News.

Does he miss football?

``I really miss it,'' said Kingdom, interviewed before this month's national championships in Norwalk, Calif. ``It's the only sport I started and didn't finish. The only other thing I haven't finished is my degree, and I'm working on that.''

At 6-feet-1 and 197 pounds, Kingdom often is mistaken for a Steeler in Pittsburgh, where he lives.

He said he is looking forward to the Goodwill Games, where a new chapter may be written in his duel with Great Britain's Colin Jackson, ranked No. 2 on the planet.

Kingdom, 27, also is eyeing other challenges. His talk about trying to become a decathlete has subsided, but he is planning to try to make the U.S. bobsled team for the 1992 Winter Olympics.

Kingdom figures pushing a bobsled can't be that different from one of his favorite training exercises - shoving a car around an empty parking lot.

Kingdom has been a thrillseeker since childhood. At age 3, he watched a Western film in which several people were hanged. The next morning, he wrapped a venetian blind cord around his neck and jumped from a windowsill. Hearing screams from her five other children, Christine Kingdom rushed into the room and found Roger on the floor grinning. The blind and its supports were on top of him.

Kingdom said physical fear is something every high hurdler has to overcome.

``Even the best of us in the early portion of the season are afraid of the hurdles,'' he said.

``If you hit a hurdle, you can't let it scare you,'' he said. `` You have to keep going. That's the fear a lot of hurdlers have these days. They get the speed built up over the first five hurdles and they start to cut back because they are afraid of hitting a hurdle, afraid of falling. It's like Renaldo Nehemiah said a couple years ago - you have to run sometimes out of control to keep the speed going. That's why you see me really killing the hurdles sometimes before the end of the race.''

Kingdom was Mr. Everything in high school in Vienna, Ga., a rural community 50 miles south of Macon. He was an all-state running back and won state discus, hurdle and high-jump titles his junior and senior years.

``All through high school and even junior high I was the standout, the blue-chip athlete, better than the guys in my class,'' he said. ``It gets boring after awhile. You want to join some guys who are good or better so you can win.''

Pitt won a football recruiting battle with Tennessee for Kingdom, who figured Pitt under Jackie Sherrill had the best chance to win a national championship. Sherrill, who had agreed during recruiting to allow Kingdom to run track, left for Texas A&M after Kingdom's freshman year. Kingdom didn't get along as well with Sherrill's successor, Foge Fazio.

One thing Kingdom didn't need when he got to college was an introduction to hard work. He learned that on his grandfather's 300-acre farm planting and harvesting peanuts, cotton and watermelons.

``You'd be sweaty, stinky and tired,'' he said. ``You'd come in, and you'd be so tired you couldn't even get in the shower. And then you had to get up the next day and do it again. I had to do that all through high school. I said, `If I have an opportunity to leave this place, I will and I won't come back.' ''