It Took 20 Years, but Mills Finally Gets to Celebrate

Billy Mills was crying, but he did not want anyone to know. Fortunately, it was raining, so he was able to walk away and turn his face to the skies.

Thus, the tears were washed from his face--if not from his heart.

The year was 1984, and Billy Mills was on the National Stadium track in Tokyo. This moment was a literal and figurative cleansing of 20 years of lingering emptiness.

Indeed, it was on that very same track in 1964 when Mills perpetrated one of the most astonishing upsets in the history of Olympic track and field when he beat Australia’s Ron Clarke--among others--in the 10,000-meter run.

After that race, Clarke was asked if he had been concerned about Mills, and his answer captured the magnitude of the occasion: “Hell, I never heard of Mills.”

Nor had anyone else.

The announcers describing the race sounded like the call on Bobby Thomson’s 1951 home run. They stopped being non-partisan professionals and succumbed to unabashed excitement.

“Look at Bill!” one screamed during the stretch run. “Look at Bill! What a TREMENDOUS surprise here . . . “

That was an electrifying last lap, Mills battling with the favored Clarke and Tunisia’s Mohamed Gammoudi.

There were shoves and surges, and Mills seemed hopelessly out of it on the final turn. However, he put on such a burst in the last 100 meters that he passed Clarke and Gammoudi like they were statues.

His winning time, 28:24.4, was an Olympic record, but something was missing for Billy Mills. He was not allowed to run a victory lap, not allowed to savor this most beautiful of moments.

As he explained Tuesday: “That was the last Olympics where any country could enter one runner even if they had not met qualifying standards. There weren’t any trials either, so it was one large field. Consequently, we were lapping runners and a victory lap would have been too confusing.”

He hesitated, and went on.

“It affected me,” he said. “I felt empty inside.”

And so that thirst for a victory lap would be quenched on that rainy day 20 years later.

“I was invited to Tokyo two years ago,” he said, “and they asked me if there was anything particular I’d like to do. I told them I wanted to go to National Stadium.”

And so it was that Billy Mills returned to the scene of that greatest of triumphs, accompanied by his wife Pat and an interpreter. On this day, before a crowd of only two, he took that victory lap.

“I heard one person clapping,” he said. “My wife. I started to cry, and I had to walk up the track about 100 yards to let the rain wet my face. But I had my victory lap. It was like putting a final chapter to rest.”

And this man’s story has so many amazing chapters. The Olympic 10,000 was virtually a microcosm of his life, in which he truly came from nowhere to attain fame and good fortune.

The 1984 movie “Running Brave” told the story of Mills’ rise from an orphaned boyhood as an Oglala Sioux Indian to the heights of track and field. This was not an easy rise because Mills was a man without a people. The Sioux called him a mixed-breed, because his father had English blood and his mother was predominantly French. The whites considered him an Indian.

“I was never allowed to be a part of either culture,” he said. “Through the world of sports, I was able to find a third culture and be accepted on equal terms.”

Mills now lives near Sacramento, but he retains strong nostalgic ties for where he has been. One of those places is San Diego. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton during the 1964 Olympics, and San Diego identified with him as one of its own.

“When San Diego adopted me,” he said, “it was my first home since I was orphaned as a youngster.”

That same streak of nostalgia--and that feeling for San Diego--caused him to be here Tuesday promoting another cause he considers to be important.

Through the sponsorship of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame, a move is under way to rebuild Balboa Stadium into a 15,000-seat facility. A fund-raising banquet is scheduled for May 22 at the Town and Country Convention Center.

Mills is aware that the Balboa Stadium site is in need of some work because of another of those deja vu trips he is prone to taking.

In the year after the Olympics, Mills ran in Balboa Stadium and set a world record for the six-mile run. This was another memorable race in which he ran 27:11.4 and beat Gerry Lindgren by 1/20th of a second.

“With about 50 yards to go,” Mills said, “I didn’t think I was going to be able to get to the front. You don’t get too many chances to lean at the tape in distances races, but I leaned and Gerry was straight up. I felt the tape, but I knew his feet were ahead of me.”

Billy Mills won that race, and took with him fond memories of that old stadium.

“A few years later,” he said, “I brought my daughter to San Diego and I took her to Balboa Stadium to show her where Daddy set the world record. It was devastated.”

Indeed, Balboa Stadium had been demolished because it did not meet earthquake standards. It was torn to the ground, but 4,000 concrete seats were built on the sides of the gaping hole and later lights were installed. An all-weather track is scheduled to be added this summer, but the major expense will be for 15,000 seats to give San Diego a desperately needed intermediate-size facility.

This is a stadium rising from a pile of rubble.

Billy Mills can relate to that.

“It would be like frosting on the cake,” he said, “to come down here to a new Balboa Stadium.”

After all, this is a man intolerant of emptiness--or unfinished business. He owes his daughter a visit to a stadium, not a sandbox.