Evelyn Ashford : It’s lights, camera, action as world’s fastest woman is brought into sharper focus

‘I didn’t allow myself friendships in track. Now, I have done what I set out to do and my biggest desire is to be more of a relaxed person. I want to be more well rounded. I’m growing as a person.’

--EVELYN ASHFORD

One of the first things actors learn about life in Hollywood is that the television lights are hot. They give off an oppressive heat, the kind that was smothering the cramped makeup room in Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University. The pros get used to it.

Beads of perspiration laced the forehead of Evelyn Ashford, sports personality. George the producer, Joyce the production assistant, Melt the sound man and Steve the cameraman were hot, too, but not quite as hot as Ashford.

More than anything, they were relieved. They had been taping for four hours and it had gone smoothly. The talent had thrown no tantrums, taken no controlled substances and made no hysterical phone calls to her agent. Ashford, seven months pregnant, putting up with swollen feet and drum beats in her abdomen, was a trouper.

The smiles, the jokes, the tolerance, the patience. It was hardly the same woman who, for an entire year before she won two gold medals at the 1984 Olympics, made it clear that she wanted to talk to reporters as much as she wanted the mumps. Ashford’s I-want-to-be-alone schtick and her seemingly cold and aloof trackside manner earned her the Sport magazine label: The Silent Sprinter.

History, pal. The fastest woman in the world has finally slowed down long enough to let her personality catch up to her.

Ask anyone. It’s a new Ashford who has been wheeled onto the showroom floor, all chrome and fins and power accessories. Corporate America, the nation’s fiscal conscience, is buying. The new Ashford is accessible, gracious, content and wildly successful.

After winning the 100 meters and anchoring the gold medal-winning relay at the Summer Games, she left for Europe to take on the boycotters of the Eastern Bloc. In Zurich on Aug. 22, Ashford beat East German rival Marlies Gohr and broke her own world record, in the same race. It was all so wonderful, Evelyn could hardly stand it.

Since then, Ashford has come into what is known as a little money. She’s done the magazines, the club speeches, the banquets, been all over the papers. She’s been on Merv. Where do you go after you’ve been kissed by Richard Dawson on Olympic Family Feud? Keys to the city of Pomona, what else? Endorsements. Well, Ashford hasn’t Rettonized America, but she has some offers. Major announcement soon.

Ashford, 28, also has her new career, television. And then there’s the matter of her baby.

“Rolling for sound ... we have speed. Steve, can you give me color bars? Evelyn, honey, remember the eye contact. Real quiet please, people. And ... whenever you’re ready, Evelyn.”

The crew is amusing itself by fashioning circles of duct tape and flinging the sticky rings at each other. Close quarters and tedium have brought out a rough-and-tumble sort of playfulness in the crew. There are a lot of tired off-color jokes and salty language. The producer is talking quietly with Ashford, nudging her memory for anecdotes she will recite in one of eight segments ESPN will show when it televises Olympic highlights this summer.

“Funny training stories? I don’t know. Let me think.” Ashford rubs her hand against her forehead. She is straddling a chair cowboy-style and wearing a flowing, flowered chiffon dress. She is having trouble condensing four years of single-minded pursuit into clever, 60-second stories.

The producer is prompting Ashford with this example: “We just had Alberto (Salazar) on. He tells this funny story about how he takes training runs with his two pit bulls. So he’s running one day and one of the dogs pulls up lame. Blew out his hamstring. No kidding, had to have surgery. Ace bandages. Doggie cast, the whole thing. So the doctor sits down with Alberto and tells him he can’t run with the dog anymore because the dog will be ruined. You have anything like that?”

No, Ashford tells him, she doesn’t have a funny doggie story. Her training stories are likely to be dry affairs, not very fascinating. Ashford’s regimen under coach Pat Connolly has been equal parts agony and misery. She trained hard. Ashford recognized early that her body was the vessel for pure power and speed. In Connolly, Ashford at last found a person whose zeal for achievement matched her own.

“I have worked very, very hard, especially last year,” Ashford said. “I was single-minded. Nothing was going to stand in my way, no distractions. I wanted to be known as the best sprinter in the world. Last year there were times when I would ask myself if it was worth it. It always was.”

That resolve was taken to its limits in 1983 when, at the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland, Ashford felt a pull in her right hamstring 50 meters into the 100-meter final. She crumpled to the track. Then, at the U.S. Olympic trials, Ashford reinjured herself in the heats. She won the 100 with her right leg a mummified casing of bandages and tape.

Later, not wanting to risk further injury, she pulled up in a 200-meter heat. Gone was the goal of three gold medals, an accomplishment made more enticing because it had been achieved by her role model, Wilma Rudolph.

“It would have been enough for me to win the gold in the 100, but I had to get greedy,” Ashford said. “It had been a smooth year until the trials. When the boycott was announced, I was disappointed, sure. The most important thing for me as an athlete is to be the best against the best.

“I don’t believe I ran my best race at the Games. Still, the Olympic experience was special. When you race, it’s like having plugs in your ears. After the race I could hear the crowd, it was so loud. I remember being on the awards stand and just . . . feeling. It was just emotion. And relief.”

Relief and deliverance. Ashford’s winning time of 10.97 was an Olympic record. Six days later, she won her second gold and began the celebration that night. Immediately she mapped out a European schedule that would set her against Gohr, with whom she had traded world records. That race, in front of 29,000 fans in Letzigrund Stadium, belonged to Ashford. Her 10.76 rid her of the stigma of the 10.79 world record she ran in Colorado Springs. Track purists scoffed at that record because it was set at an altitude well above sea level, where the lighter air usually makes faster times.

More important to Ashford, she had beaten Gohr. She had exorcised the demons. After the race, Ashford took a victory lap to a standing ovation. At the end of the lap, Gohr and teammate Ingrid Auserwald each grabbed one of Ashford’s arms and raised them high in victory. This new respect from Gohr was unexpected.

“I was really nervous before the race. Really nervous,” Ashford said. “This was it. I had wanted to race the best and they were all there. It was my best race. Everybody went a little mad after the race for about 15 minutes. It felt great. A world record, not at altitude. I relaxed. I think Marlies gained some respect for me that day. And, I think I gained a friend.”

That may have been the day that marked, in Ashford’s 28th year, her coming-out party. The world’s oldest debutante.

“For this shot, Evelyn, could you just bring your hands up? Fine. Now, I want you to do it because you want to and are comfortable with it, not because someone told you to.” Could it ever be different? Hasn’t it always been just another refrain from “My Way” with Ashford? Hasn’t she always called the shots? Yes, and circumstances conspired against her. Her us-against-them attitude and bunker mentality was as calculated as every methodical Connolly workout. Ashford’s modus operandi was silence. She was quiet before a race and not too chatty after. She didn’t acknowledge her competitors. In Ashford’s mind, she couldn’t let anyone in, for it would make her vulnerable and that could lead to failure.

“Looking back, I’m not sure I would do it the same,” Ashford said. “But if the situation comes up again in 1988, it could be the same thing. I think I would try to be more tactful, more diplomatic. But, you see, I had to do it that way. The press was really a distraction. And, the truth is, I’m really a softie. I don’t want to beat a friend. I didn’t allow friendships to come into it. I have to want to beat somebody, and if these were my best friends out there, it couldn’t work.

“It was something I denied myself. I didn’t allow myself friendships in track. Now, I have done what I set out to do and my biggest desire is to be more of a relaxed person. I want to be more well rounded. I’m growing as a person. As a world-class athlete, you miss a lot of things. You miss life. Perhaps I have been too tunnel-visioned. I know I am different now. I’m more relaxed, more open. I don’t mind interviews. I enjoy talking. Last year, I wouldn’t be talking like this. No way.”

She can laugh at herself and at her image. She can laugh at the suggestion that, after years of personal excavation, a personality has been uncovered. Only it’s not like that. It’s only now that Ashford has decided to share herself with us.

“There are different sides to everybody,” said Ray Washington, Ashford’s husband of seven years. “Evelyn has been like this as long as I’ve known her. People are seeing that there has been a method to her madness. It’s a mind game. Everything Evelyn has done with her competitors has worked.”

The new Evelyn is appealing. The new Evelyn is vivacious. Randy Hall, the creator, producer and host of ESPN’s “World Class Women” has noted the change. She liked it so much that in January she hired Ashford as host for a segment of the show.

“I had interviewed Evelyn before (the Olympics) and she was more shy, more quiet,” Hall said. “While she’s competing she’s not real communicative. She was not real outgoing with people. But with the Olympic pressure off, she was a joy to interview. I did an interview with her after the Games and we talked about what her goals were. She mentioned she wanted to get into broadcasting. I said, ‘Let me get someone’s (business) card.’ I decided at that moment I wanted her for the show.”

It wasn’t big news that Ashford wanted to work in television. Last year, in the midst of her media hibernation, she said: “I want it all. Fame, fortune and all the commercials there are to do.”

Hall said: “Evelyn is very good at this. We have to sit down with her and do critiques of her shows (she’s done 13). It’s tough. She absolutely can take it. She works hard to improve. Hiring a jock? I thought about it a great deal. We did promos for the first six shows saying, ‘ . . . with Olympian Evelyn Ashford.’ Now we say ‘ . . . with reporter Evelyn Ashford.’ ”

Life on the other side of the microphone has tempered Ashford-the-athlete’s view of the process of interviewing. “Now, I talk to athletes who answer questions with a ‘yeah’. I realize I used to do that,” she said. “Or they answer very quickly and you stand there trying to come up with another question to ask. I’ve seen both sides and it’s been very educational.”

Ashford said she planned to go into broadcasting all along. “I take pride in everything I do. I don’t want to be handed anything. I want to earn it,” she said.

Don’t fear, they are working her hard enough to satisfy her pride. She has a hectic schedule with long days. But unlike other Olympic athletes, she does not want to be an actress.

“Evelyn has no desire to become a full-fledged actress,” said Bob Mazza, Ashford’s Los Angeles-based marketing and public relations consultant. Also on Team Ashford are high-powered Chicago sports attorney George Andrews, her business manager, and Connolly.

“Evelyn wants to continue her running career,” Mazza said. “And we are interested in the long term. She has a dynamic personality and an appeal that I think that corporate America should look at. Corporate America wants to be affiliated with a winner. And Evelyn is honest.”

ESPN producer George Bell has seen Ashford work for only a few hours and he’s impressed. The segments taped at Pepperdine are finished quickly.

“Evelyn is very charismatic, naturally so. And she has a very appealing smile,” Bell says. “The problem with capitalizing on fame from the Olympics is that it is an occasional event. But some people have made broadcast careers on that basis. Evelyn can be one of those.”

“Powder. Powder please, the star is shining.” Ashford is reclining in the back of a navy-blue limousine. She is sitting facing the television and the bar and the telephone. The driver is outside, waiting. At the end of a long day of taping, Ashford sighs and settles down to an interview. She slips off her shoes, the international token of conviviality.

She is seven-months pregnant with her first child. Last season she had hinted that she would take this year off to have a baby. But who would have guessed that after winning the gold and setting the world record, Ashford would actually go through with it?

“I know I said I would do it, but it was just talk,” Ashford said, smiling softly. “Then it happened. I’ve been married seven years and I’ve always wanted children. The first three months I was so sick. I mean 24 hours a day. I was so used to feeling good that it was difficult. Then I had this tremendous amount of energy. I have my moments when I’m very happy. Other times I think I should be out running, the guilt. I don’t know, when do you stop pushing?

“I’ve noticed that since I’ve been pregnant I see babies everywhere. I love talking to them. I never used to really like kids that much. I guess it comes out of you naturally. I don’t think I want this child to be an athlete. Maybe a good high school athlete and pretty good in college. But I don’t want it to miss anything. I guess I just want it to be an everyday All-American kid, just be happy. And have common sense. My grandmother used to say that all the time. She’d see people who were very well educated and they had not a bit of common sense. Of anything that I pass on to our child, I guess I would want it to have my determination.”

Her decision to have a child in a year that her advisers thought she should be barnstorming the country, flashing her medals, flew in the face of convention. It also lost her a few endorsements. Her lucrative shoe contract with Puma expired December 31. Was it renewed? Ashford pats her abdomen in answer. There is a “We-can’t-talk-about-it-but-boy-is-it-big” soft drink promotion that has been pushed back until after the birth.

Her condition has not been incorporated into her new career as well as she might like. Ashford says that if she is bitter about anything it is how her pregnancy has been viewed. “It’s not a disease,” she said.

The pregnancy has forced Ashford to take time off from training and is giving her body a rest. This is not an important year in track and field, except for the World Cup in October. And, in her mind, Ashford keeps hearing Valerie Brisco-Hooks and other moms tell how much stronger they were after the birth of their babies. Ashford likes this thought and revives it when she’s depressed.

Is the new Ashford ever depressed? You bet. She’s a little bit of everything, just like everyone else . And her ice-woman image is worn at the knees. Get rid of it, baby, it’s only money. Big smile, Evelyn. That’s a wrap.