When you’re in those final laps,” Animas said, “and it begins to hurt, just remember where you come from.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
KNOXVILLE
Harry Beckwith shuffled the mile to Joe Black Stadium at five-thirty a.m. The tepid Tennessee humidity covered him like a wet sheet and he wondered how the 10,000-meter runners would fare in their race that afternoon.
“Morning!” Beckwith greeted the weathered Black man in faded coveralls whose wheelbarrow was heaped with hoses.
“Gu’ mornin’, Suh,” said the groundskeeper in a rasping voice. “You workin’ out?”
They had lived the same number of years but the Black man quit running in 1948 after winning the half-mile at the Tennessee Negro High Schools Championships. When he first started selling programs outside the stadium, no Black athletes were on the field, and no Black spectators were in the stands.
Harry Beckwith smiled, bent to touch his toes, and slipped a damp twenty-dollar bill from his sock top.
“Could you please let me onto the track for about 30 minutes?” Beckwith asked, handing him the money.
“No. Suh,” the voice whispered back. “Ah’ll let you in but ah don’t need no money for it.” Only a few teeth were visible when he smiled.
“Please keep it,” Beckwith insisted. “Buy some cold drinks for your grandchildren at the track meet today. I can get you as many tickets as you want. How many’d you like?”
The groundskeeper was captivated by the old bird-like White man. There was no condescension – no separation by race or wealth – no distance whatever.
“Ah could use ’bout ten tickets, ah reckon.”
Beckwith stared into the shining black eyes and smiled.
“Chessy Adams,” said the old Black man.
“Harry Beckwith,” he said, and they shook hands.
He circled the track slowly in Lane 1, stooping to remove pebbles and scraps of tape from the path of runners who would follow. In eight hours, twenty-four Olympic hopefuls would stand on this track – chatting, fretting, withdrawn, praying – their moment of truth upon them.
The bloody sun had not yet peeked above the stadium rim when the old Olympian finished his jog, waved a thanks to Chessy on the infield, and walked back to his hotel.
“Vince? This is Beckwith.” He listened to the voice on the other end.
“Get up, you slug-a-bed! It’s almost eight o’clock!
“Say, I need you to take twelve tickets to the stadium as soon as possible. They’re for a Mr. Chessy Adams. Get them to him before ten.”
Beckwith nodded to the voice, the phone slipping from his sweaty hand. He picked it up to finish.
“I’ll settle up with you later, Vince. Just make sure Mr. Adams gets those tickets. You’ll find him. Ask around when you get there – he’s in charge of the stadium!”
* * * * *
Kivato Wapiti crouched beneath the makeshift kiva in the center of his room at The Southerner Hotel and prayed. Three chairs and his sheets and blankets created a dark dome.
Cecil Medley’s coach, Iggy Frost, had died last summer. On his death bed, Frost told Cecil to seek out Animas, “he’s my dearest friend in coaching.”
Cecil and Kivato had become training partners and friends at Rio Grande State over the past nine months. The 5’6″ Native American and the 6’5″ African American were more than an odd couple – they were athletes on the same mission.
Medley’s marathon mishap left him with only one Olympic hope, the 10,000-meter run. Kivato had qualified to run both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
“You have an American record inside you, Kivato,” Coach Animas had told him the night before.
“Yes, I know that is true. But I am not sure I want it to come out.” The pride of the Havatura Pueblo spoke softly and deliberately.
Animas peered into Kivato’s soul as he had done with many champions. He’d glimpsed fear, passion, anger, and God in the eyes of some. In Kivato’s eyes, he saw only a gentle commitment to life. This athlete had no ulterior motive. He represented no one but himself. The pressure of the Trials did not bother him.
“I must do what comes to me tomorrow,” Kivato said to his coach. “I will know what to do when it is time.”
“When you’re in those final laps,” Animas said, “and it begins to hurt, just remember where you come from. You do not owe anything to me.”
“Thank you, Coach. But I owe you much. I owe you my peace.”
The sun was a vulture, hovering over the stadium, when the starter’s pistol cracked. Twenty-four runners lurched into their twenty-five-lap journey to the Olympic Games – or back home. Worried officials hastily erected an aid station on the backstretch, in Lane 4, where the broiled racers could snatch a water cup and run through a curtain of spray from a hose.
Kivato Wapiti zipped to the front, fearless of the heat. Still just nineteen, he ran with the aplomb of a virtuoso. For the other twenty-three men, running today was a physical and psychological ordeal. They tried to override the normal human instinct to avoid pain or collapse. To Kivato, running was as effortless as birdsong.
* * * * *
THIS VIEW OF SPORT
By Ken Davis
The grandstands were nearly empty yesterday for the men’s 10,000-meter run. The 102-degree temperature in Knoxville kept hordes from watching the first Olympic Trials final. Too bad for them.
Kivato Wapiti, the Pueblo Indian from New Mexico spat into the eye of the sun and dominated the race, lapping twenty of the twenty-three other runners. But – he did not win.
Wapiti, an enigma in these days of prize money and running shoe contracts, sailed over the track for 9,900 meters – on pace to smash the U.S. record – then stepped off the track. He walked up the stadium ramp and crossed Volunteer Boulevard to Confederate Park. This writer bolted from the air-conditioned press box, fearing the lad had suffered heat stroke.
The best distance runner this country has seen in a generation was breast-stroking his way across a park pond, ducks paddling alongside. I sat at the edge and waited.
“Today is not my time,” explained the unfathomable youth. “My friend, Cecil Medley, deserves to make the team. Perhaps I can run well in the 5,000.”
Thanks to Wapiti, Medley earned the coveted third, and final, Olympic team spot in the 10,000, trailing Jack Harp and Yves Martin. No one in the press corps had seen anything like it.
Medley improved his 10-kilometer time by 45 seconds at last month’s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, but was ranked just sixth for yesterday’s race. With four laps to run, he was still 50 meters behind Harp and Martin. A fourth-place finish in a second event seemed likely.
Wapiti closed rapidly on his friend, ran behind Medley for 300 meters, touched him on the shoulder, then stopped at the top of the homestretch.
Wapiti’s sister, Tia, easily advanced to the semifinals of the 400-meter hurdles, erasing the Trials record by a full second. The tabloid press, you recall, brutalized Tia last month when a blood test proved she was not Kivato’s biological sister. She silenced the jackals with a simple, “I know” and has proceeded to be America’s finest hope for a gold medal at the Games.