SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 13 : WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS . . .

This is the kind of thing that tests a friendship--one buddy taunting another, hands down, chin thrust out, tongue wagging. That is the way U.S. middleweight Chris Byrd treated Chris Johnson of Canada Thursday en route to a 17-3 victory in a semifinal action.

And to think that Johnson is invited to the Byrd home for the dual celebration of Chris’ 22nd birthday and brother Patrick’s wedding on August 15. The way Byrd rubbed it in on Johnson, you might expect him to wear his gold medal, should he win it, with his tuxedo.

“I hope he’s still coming,” said Byrd, who frustrated the hard-hitting Johnson with his slick defensive moves and sharp counterpunching. Byrd must now get past Cuba’s Ariel Hernandez Saturday to win the gold.

Chances are one of the chief tactics he used against Johnson will not work with Hernandez, who speaks only Spanish. While laying on the ropes weathering a brutal body attack in the second round, Byrd tried a few verbal jabs. “You can’t hit hard, Chris,” he told Johnson. “You got nothing.”

Byrd’s father, Joe, the U.S. head coach, did not think any of this was funny. “If they had checked my blood pressure, I would have been disqualified,” he said.

And, sounding like millions of other exasperated fathers, Byrd Sr. added: “I been telling him since he was a little kid to keep his hands up, and he’s been doing what he wants all along. But he’s got a rubber waistline. It’s just a gift that he has.”

The most vocal of the Byrd clan, mother Rose, was not at ringside because the airline ticket she won in a contest sponsored by a U.S. food company required her to fly home Wednesday. Joe Byrd said he tried to change the ticket, but by the time he received word that the flight could be changed, Rose was already on the plane home. “I hope she made it home in time to see it on TV,” he said.

“I heard a mother’s voice out there,” Chris Byrd said, “but it was Chris Johnson’s mother, not mine.”

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and Baltimore Sun, all Times-Mirror newspapers.