“These events aren’t for the mentally fragile. When you have twelve fit and courageous young people willing to run themselves to collapse, only three can be completely successful. The other nine leave with doubts about whether it was worth the pain and effort. Despite their disappointment today, four years from now, many of them will return to give it another shot.”
Chapter 27
FIVE THOUSAND FINALS
Sunlight bounced from the hills west of town and into the hotel room. John Corbin lay on the flowered bedspread and pondered his future. The Olympics, after all, are meaningless. Who remembers the winner of the 5,000 meters at the 1936 Games? But there’s Zatopek, Nurmi, Viren. Surely, they influenced – probably still do – hundreds of young people in countries the world over. Certainly, even the lesser lights – Mimoun, Norpoth, Gammoudi, Ritola – motivated the children of their countries. Heck, they motivate me, John realized.
He noticed the blinking light on his room phone and called the front desk.
“Do you have a message for John Corbin?”
“Yes, Mr. Corbin,” the young voice said. “Mr. Beckwith will meet you at 10:30 a.m. at the Knoxville Country Club. His car will pick you up in front of the hotel at ten o’clock.”
Good old Harry, John thought. First class every day in every city.
Corbin unloaded his gym bag and checked its contents again. Spikes, singlet, numbers pinned front and back, shorts, warm-ups. He packed his bag and set it by the door. In eight hours, he would step onto the rubbery red track and run 12-1/2 laps as fast as he could.
* * * * *
Chessy Adams was behind the stadium, refilling water coolers, when screaming tires yanked him from his task. He broke into a lumbering run toward the boulevard east of the track.
Minutes before, he had watched from the stadium steps as Sarah Herrington took a ten-meter lead into the homestretch of the 1500-meter run. A pack of pursuers, like three hyenas at her heels, found a way to sprint. One by one, they edged past her as thousands of spectators yelled, shocked but transfixed, as people are while watching a cheetah chase down a gazelle.
Chessy sprinted now, his hardest running in forty years, to reach the lanky, blue-clad woman, lying limp on the hot tarry pavement.
“Git back!” Chessy hollered at the growing crowd of motorists who left their cars and edged toward the injured athlete. “Y’all git back!”
“By God, it’s that runner,” he muttered.
Sarah was breathing but unconscious, her left thigh obviously broken from the collision with a massive SUV. The woman who had struck her was frozen to the steering wheel.
“One a’ you with a cell phone – call me an ambulance!”
Bill Szymczak was lining up to start the 5,000 with the other eleven finalists as the women’s 1500 finished 150 meters away at the opposite corner of the track. He was in his zone now and would not be distracted. The starter called them to their marks and with the pistol’s report, they were underway.
John Corbin jostled like a pinball among the eight men up front. This is it, he thought. These have been your investments: a hundred breathless miles each week; tons of weights lifted; joints stretched to the point of pain; muscles bullied into peak fitness. It’s time to let it all out.
The time at 400 meters, 60.2 seconds, said the announcer. That’s Bill Sizz-mick of St. Louis leading . . . check that, that’s Sim-zak.
Szymczak, strong, muscular, and courageous – those were Bill’s thoughts as he hit the front. These guys don’t want a fast first mile. Let me take the starch out of their legs and we’ll see who can still run hard the last two miles.
“That’s Corbin,” Harry told her, pointing, “there, in the red singlet and shorts, about fifth place.
“What’s his best time this year?” Mary asked.
“Thirteen-twelve. It will take a PR to make this team.”
Szymczak, Guthrie, and Bell surged ahead, only to be absorbed at the 1,000-meter point by the pack. Madras, Corbin, and Murphy made it six at the front. Wapiti, apparently in over his head, trailed the leaders by 60 meters. Ten laps remained.
And here’s our split at 1600 meters . . . 4:03.30. That’s Madras of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida; Corbin of Cleveland; and Bell of Baton Rouge in the lead. Murphy, Szymczak, and Guthrie are the second trio. Eight and a half laps to go.
“Look at their courage, Daddy,” said Mary, unable to keep her seat that overlooked the homestretch. “Most of them are racing faster than they’ve ever dreamed.”
“Corbin looks good to me, Mary. He’s interval-trained and has practiced surging many times a day. It’s a real dog fight down there,” Beckwith said.
One dozen of the fittest human beings in the United States were pounding around the track at fifteen miles an hour, oblivious to the crowd of thirty-five thousand cheering supporters. Not a thought was wasted on the ninety-degree heat or the humidity that sealed sweat to their bodies like paint. Eleven men ran to the rhythm dictated by all the others in the race–no one was comfortable now.
There were still six long laps to run and every man was in crisis–every man but one.
Kivato Wapiti closed the gap to fifty meters. These guys are madmen, he thought, and glanced at the rim of the stadium where fifty state flags hung limp. Six laps to go – this isn’t so bad. A drumbeat began in his head and he willed his tiny feet to match its tempo.
And here they come through 3,000 meters, folks. It’s Guthrie, Corbin, and Szymczak, running abreast. The unofficial split is 7:50. They’re on pace to crack the Trials record of 13:08. Five laps remain to be run. And now, on the curve, Kyle Bell takes the lead.
Behind the stadium, a siren’s wail could be heard. The runners on the track heard only the grunts of competition and the fearful white noise of total exertion.
John Corbin hesitated momentarily when Bell hit the front. Let the speed demons jockey for the lead – there’s still more than a mile left. Gather yourself, John thought . . . gather yourself – and get ready for the final 800.
Madras was content to run in fifth. He was still aerobic. The high-altitude training in sand and on mountain trails, where seven-minute miles were impossible, had amazingly prepared him for this challenge. Oxygen bathed his muscles, carried by fifteen-percent more red blood cells than his rivals.
His bright pink singlet stood out among the others, and each time he rounded the final turn, the brown letters H.O.G. could be read by everyone in the stands.
Calvin Benlehr, Chris Nikolas, and Diana Bailey stood at the top of the straightaway, on the stadium rail, and shouted encouragement.
“You go, Chuck! You’re the best there is!” Diana’s small voice pierced the afternoon heat and he heard her. Nodding, he tightened the gap between himself and Guthrie and now cruised ten meters from the lead. Madras thought, for just a second, of Old Joe Falcone, and how great it felt sprinting down the grass road toward him.
Kivato could see the nearest six men sag. They came back to him suddenly, like the jackrabbit he had run down when he was twelve years old. Be relentless, his father had said, and no other living thing can elude you forever.
Four laps to go and it’s Guthrie and Bell out front. Corbin, Madras, and Szymczak in pursuit.
This result just in – Irene Dahlgren has thrown a new American record in the javelin – 217 feet, three inches.
And here are the official results for the women’s 1500: Janice Harper, Janelle Madison, and Kelley Kirkland are our top three and will represent the USA in the Olympics.
One thousand meters remained and Kyle Bell decided to go for it right now. Bell, a three-time NCAA champion in the indoor 3000, dropped his arms and lengthened his already long stride to swallow up the next 200 meters in 29 seconds. Bell’s move shocked the four men in position to see it. They wondered if there were still two laps to go.
“Is that right?” screamed Guthrie, pointing to the LAPS sign. A large “2” stared him in the face. An official yelled back, “Yes! Two laps to go!”
Now 800 meters remained Only five were still in contention – for the other seven, the Olympic dream had opened a four-year gap.
Kyle Bell holds the lead, his time is 11:04. Then Guthrie, followed by Corbin, Szymczak, and Madras.
Kivato was mentally running across the desert, as light as a roadrunner, skittering through the sagebrush in search of a plump lizard. Are there two laps left? Yes, two laps. The run up the arroyo is that far. Guthrie is thirty meters ahead. I wonder if I can catch him?
John Corbin reached deep inside his guts and found a surge strong enough to regain contact with Guthrie. Now only 600 meters remained. “Six hundred meters, John. Live in hell for just ninety more seconds.” The Demon of Pain had long since left the track and was wading in the pond across the street.
“And that’s Guthrie, taking the lead into the bell lap!” bellowed the announcer and the entire stadium roared to its feet. “It’s Guthrie, followed by Corbin, then Bell, Madras and Szymczak. And it’s Szymczak, passing around the curve to take third. Wapiti continues to close with 300 meters to go!”
Corbin reached deeper, into the recesses of the heart that had served him so well, and began to sprint. The five leaders were now just three strides apart. Wapiti incrementally closed the gap on them all with no visible increase in effort.
Madras, in lane three, poked his head into the lead and Guthrie, finding another burst of power, fought him off. Guthrie, blinded by his effort, stepped on the curb. He sprawled, face-first onto the infield grass, and skidded to a stop, both feet still moving.
Guthrie is down! Guthrie is down, and it’s Madras, Corbin, and Szymczak. And then Bell. Wapiti is fifth and closing!
“The Helsinki race!” Beckwith blurted.
“What??” screamed Mary.
“The ’52 Olympics in Helsinki. Zatopek and Chataway and the rest! I can’t believe it!”
“And it’s Madras, Szymczak, and Corbin. Bell joins them in the stretch. And here comes Wapiti!”
“Come on, John,” whispered Beckwith. “Come on, John.”
The four were in a dead sprint up the straightaway. Wapiti was closing on them all at the tape. The crowd cheered so loudly, it was impossible to think. Five men crossed the finish line together.
What a wonderful race, ladies and gentlemen. We’re going to need the photo for that one. The unofficial time for the men’s 5,000-meters, 13:04.21.
“Did he do it, Daddy?” Mary asked, bouncing with excitement, perspiration dripping from her face. “Do you think John made the team?”
“Doesn’t matter,” answered Beckwith. “They’ll all remember that race the rest of their lives.”
The ambulance wailed its way to the hospital with a beautiful unconscious woman inside, her hand held firmly by an old Black man in coveralls.
Chapter 28
ONE SECOND
Athletics Gazette July 14
Both the women’s 1500 and the men’s 5000 at the Olympic Trials Thursday looked like the blanket finish of a 100-meter sprint. Determining an Olympic team on the basis of 100ths of a second is simultaneously fascinating and sobering. The winners are elated but their joy is mixed with an equal portion of relief. The losers are doubtless as talented as their compatriots who will don Olympic team blazers.
Sarah Herrington of St. Louis placed fourth in the 1500 in her fourth straight Olympic Trials. Her time of 4:00.41 was less than a half-second slower than winner Janice Harper of Corvallis, Oregon, who ran 4:00.29. Sandwiched between Herrington and Harper were Janelle Madison, of New York City and Kelley Kirkland of St. Louis, who split the second further with times of 4:00.33 and 4:00.36.
Herrington suffered fractures to both femurs when she was struck by a car outside the stadium, moments after the race. Dr. Elwood Zirbel told Athletics Gazette, “Her prognosis is good for a return to running within a year. The psychological damage is impossible to assess at this early date,” said Zirbel, a Knoxville orthopedic surgeon.
Chuck Madras, John Corbin, and Kivato Wapiti won the three coveted spots in the men’s 5,000-meter event. Madras, from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, lunged at the line for victory in 13:04.21. Officials at the Trials studied the photo timer images from both the left and right sides of the finish line to determine second and third place. Corbin of Cleveland was credited with 13:04.25 and Wapiti, of Havatura, New Mexico, broke the beam in 13:04.30. Two others crowded into the half-second that determined the Olympic team: Kyle Bell of Baton Rouge placed fourth in 13:04.33 and Bill Szymczak, St. Louis, clocked 13:04.41.
“The first five men all deserve a berth on the Olympic team in the 5000,” commented Armando Animas, coach of Wapiti. The nineteen-year-old Pueblo Indian dropped out of the 10,000 meters six days earlier, despite holding a three-hundred-meter lead with one hundred meters to go.
“Kivato has his own motivations,” Animas explained, when asked about his charge’s unconventional actions. “We focused all year on the 10,000. His mis-applied loyalty to a friend [Cecil Medley–AG] led him to drop out before the finish in the ten. He ran a sixteen-second PR in the 5,000, so he earned his place on the team legitimately.”
Animas concluded: “These events aren’t for the mentally fragile. When you have twelve fit and courageous young people willing to run themselves to collapse, only three can be completely successful. The other nine leave with doubts about whether it was worth the pain and effort. Despite their disappointment today, four years from now, many of them will return to give it another shot.”
Chapter 29
CONTEMPLATION
Mary spent the night alone in her hotel bed. “I felt like a tossed salad,” she told her father when he inquired how she had slept.
“Jeremy wanted to be alone,” she said. “He could have stayed with me or in the athletes’ hotel. He drove up to Gallatin to a bed and breakfast.”
Jeremy Stanfield sat on the porch of the Hunter Ridge B&B and stared at the mountains that were covered with flowering rhododendron and summer haze. The smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air. He rocked back and forth in an oversized rocker and pondered his last two years.
Much that we do as humans is futile, he thought. A man could survive with minimal effort, living off the land; finding or stealing what food he needed; sleeping in barns or under the stars. Thoreau was right – we enslave ourselves with ownership and the pursuit of comfort. But Thoreau could not have guessed the utter senselessness of athletics.
To what end do men and women subject themselves to daily discomfort? The athlete eschews normal human appetites and deliberately pursues physical and psychological stress. If all behavior is either appetitive or consummatory, as Ratner and Denny postulate, where does an athlete’s training fall? Which of Maslow’s needs are being met?
Fewer than one in a dozen track athletes gains any recognition for their efforts; perhaps one in a hundred is recruited by a college for their ability to throw a heavy object, run fast or far, or hurl their body into the air.
One in a thousand might realistically aspire to qualify for a national championship; one in ten thousand, a chance for international competition. Earning a livelihood through athletics is rare, though many try. Fewer than five thousand athletes worldwide earn a living from track and field, even for a short time. A single illness or injury can fell the champion for good.
Why did the ancient Greek philosophers hold athletes in high esteem? Did they live vicariously through those who sweated and bled? For every Olympic victor there were ten thousand who tried and failed – perhaps ten times more who thought it was possible.
And yet, despite the odds and the utter senselessness of both the struggle and the goal, I am driven, Jeremy thought. I am driven, as certainly and passionately as if running were a morsel of food for which I would fight – as if I were starving – to the death.
So here I sit, rocking on a porch in Tennessee, Jeremy mused. Six hours from now, I’ll meet O’Neal and ten other men who have trained as hard as I have. We’ll race each other for eight minutes, jumping barriers set on an artificial running surface, splash seven times into a water pit, endure physical discomfort and possible humiliation – for what? For the goal of placing in the top three in the race, so we can do the same thing against runners from other countries in six weeks.
Jeremy rocked and rocked and after an hour of bewilderment, returned to his room, packed his duffel bag, and drove himself down to Knoxville.
Place in the top three. Yes, I’ll run myself blind this afternoon so I can do it again.
Kerry O’Neal was still the favorite. Las Vegas odds-makers put him at 2-1. Stanfield was 4-1 to win but even odds to make the team. In his luxury suite at the Southerner, O’Neal was filled with dread and determination. I can’t let another American beat me. I own this event.
O’Neal leafed through his training log. Workout after workout was drawn on the pages, meticulously timed, perfectly executed. Reading through his log books always gave him confidence before a race.
I’ve beaten every one of them before, he assured himself. None of the others have been to the Olympics. These are my third Trials. I’ll go to the front at halfway and simply fight off every attack from there to the finish.
* * * * *
Tia Wapiti raced three consecutive days to win the 400-meter hurdles. As the twentieth qualifier in the open 400-meters, she had scant hope of advancing past the first round – it was just two hours after her hurdles victory.
“You’re in Lane 9. Run eyeballs-out from the gun,” Animas told her, leaning over the grandstand railing.
“You’ve got a rest day tomorrow. Your fitness is higher than any woman you’re racing. You’ll be a target for the entire field to key on out there, but they’ll tie up when they see they aren’t catching you.
“In the stretch,” his eyes agleam with confidence in her, “some of them will fade. You are used to being very tired over the last hundred meters. No hurdles, Tia. Just fly.”
The race unfolded as if Animas had choreographed it with all eight women. Tia’s stagger placed her sixty-five meters around the first turn. At the gun, she sprinted her fifty-meter curve, down the backstretch, and into the last two hundred. Around the final turn, her peripheral vision caught one, two, three rivals inching past on her left. She focused on putting one foot before the other, four inches from the line. Tia reached the last hundred meters in fourth place; for fifty meters, it appeared she would stick there. “Perfect form, Tia,” Animas said in her brain. With thirty meters to go, Heidi Lannin began to stagger. Tia strode past her and into the semifinals with a PR time of 49.71 seconds.
“I miss the hurdles, Coach,” Tia said, panting. “Give me twenty-four hours to rest and I think I can make the final.”
“You will make the final. Go over to the park,” her coach commanded, “and get in fifteen minutes of jogging. I’ll meet you at the practice track tomorrow afternoon at three.”
“Good job, Tia.” He winked. Tia grinned back, nodded, and walked toward Confederate Park.
After four races in three days, Tia rode the shuttle to the hotel, phoned her mother, then fell into a deep sleep. She awoke at 11 a.m. the next day, after fourteen hours in bed. For once, it felt good to be a sack-rat.