Now She’s Picking Others Up : Joan Hansen Fell in ’84 Race, Too, but She Got Up

Through his Olympic film making, Bud Greenspan has made heroes out of the sometimes-forgotten. He captures the Olympic spirit through the courageous stories of athletes whom others overlook.

But even Greenspan missed what happened to Joan Hansen in 1984.

Not only that, but as Greenspan recalled the other day: “I didn’t even know who she was.”

Her story was lost in the commotion that followed the collision of Zola Budd and Mary Decker in the women’s 3,000-meter final. Hansen was in that race, too. And, like Decker, she fell. But unlike Decker, Hansen got up and finished.

Only several months later, when Greenspan met her at an early screening of scenes from “16 Days of Glory,” his movie about the Los Angeles Olympics, did he learn what happened.

Impressed with Hansen’s story, Greenspan decided to include her in his upcoming PBS series on the 1984 Summer Olympics.

“I love Joan Hansen for what she did,” Greenspan said. “She is what the Olympics is all about.”

Hansen, who fell just 300 meters before Decker did, picked herself up off the Coliseum track that August night and placed 8th out of 12 runners. The first runner she passed after her fall was Decker, who was still prone on the infield grass.

“I was in last place when Mary fell,” Hansen said. “I saw her go down and lay on the ground, but my main concern was to keep going.

“I knew she was down. I hoped she would get back up. I cared about what happened. I could relate. But I also knew in the middle of a race, there was no way I could stop and help her.”

Hansen might not have been able to pause then for Decker, but she has now for a dozen San Diego County athletes who need financial help. Hansen has at least temporarily put her racing career on hold to help start the San Diego National Athletes Fund, a nonprofit corporation designed to raise money for San Diego athletes training for the Olympics.

Instead of chasing her own Olympic dream, Hansen is working to make it possible for others to realize theirs.

“I chose this route over making the Olympic team for one reason: It will last year after year after year,” Hansen said. “An Olympic (3,000) race only lasts under nine minutes. If I can see established athletes four years from now, 10 years from now, 80 years from now, no longer having to door-knock for funds, that is truely worthwhile.”

This was supposed to be the week that Hansen would attempt to qualify for her second U.S. Olympic team. The 3,000 final was Sunday in Indianapolis. Mary Decker Slaney made the team again. Hansen watched the race on television here in San Diego.

Just a few months ago, Hansen intended to be racing Slaney again. But she soon ran into financial complications. Hansen said that without shoe-company or other corporate sponsorship, she did not have the $16,000 she estimated she needed to train full-time for the Olympics. She tried to find new funding, possibly a corporation that would help her in return for seminar or community service work.

“I did not think it would be difficult for an Olympian and former world-record holder and a finalist in the last Olympics, who had bad luck falling down, to get sponsorship,” Hansen said. “Two hundred packets went into the mail, and a couple weeks later, I was covered in rejection notices.”

Hansen said she learned that companies were not interested in helping individual athletes financially without the tax advantages a nonprofit foundation provided.

Only Mesa Planning Group, a La Mesa-based financial services company, showed an interest. The company not only agreed to give her $5,000; during her interview, the idea of starting a nonprofit group to help other San Diego athletes developed.

Confident that the plan would work, Hansen, who has lived in San Diego since 1985, left for Tucson to train with her identical twin sister, Joy, a world-ranked triathlete. The two, who celebrated their 30th birthdays last Friday, had been college teammates in swimming and track at Arizona.

This was to be Joan Hansen’s first all-out training effort since 1985. She had skipped the 1986 national championship meet to concentrate on her schooling as a sports massage therapist, and she missed the 1987 meet because of an injury.

“My training was phenomenally better than ‘84,” said Hansen, who was slowed by a series of injuries in the early months that year. “But I found myself distracted. Physically I was fine, but mentally I was wondering what was happening back in San Diego with the project.”

When she returned to San Diego for a visit to discuss the athletes fund with the two men with Mesa who had backed her plan--Stan Williams, Mesa chairman, and Tony Calman, vice president of operations and marketing--she learned that it was struggling to get off the ground.

“Initially I planned on racing this year,” Hansen said. “The Mesa Group was helping me, and I left to train with the intention of going to the Olympics. But when I came back three weeks later, I saw the work was not going at the pace it needed to go.

“I knew I had two choices: go for the Olympics for myself and see an organization that was very sound and could really help a lot of kids possibly fail. Or I could turn back around and commit to that.”

Hansen decided to help. She abandoned her training, moved back to San Diego and began working as the organization’s only full-time volunteer.

“At first we were a little surprised she was moving back to San Diego to work on this full time,” Calman said. “We were assisting her in her goal of trying to make the Olympic team. Anytime someone sets a personal goal like that, you want to see them succeed. But she revised her goals. She didn’t have an injury or anything, it was just she had a desire to do something to help others.”

Joy Hansen said her sister was torn between wanting to go ahead with her own training and seeing the athletes fund become a reality.

“It was like balancing two things on a scale,” said Joy, who is now training outside Philadelphia. “On one side she had her training, and on the other side she had this new idea. She kept weighing one against the other. It was not an easy decision, but once she did, she was happy.”

The hours so far have been long, and the fund-raising only has recently has begun to build. The organization is not directly affiliated with the U.S. Olympic Committee-- Olympic was, in fact, deleted from the name it wanted to use to conform with federal law. But Hansen said she has carefully kept the USOC aware of what the organization is doing. She is dealing particularly with Bill Toomey, the former Olympic decathlon champion and USOC fund-raising director.

The group has raised about $4,000 since April, according to Calman. Hansen said most of the money has come from service organizations such as the Lions Club and individuals, including Sen. Alan Cranston.

“Early on we did not want to concentrate on fund-raising,” Hansen said. “We wanted to work on building our organizational structure.”

The fund did make its first disbursements about two weeks ago, Calman said, sending checks of $200 to 12 athletes. Included in this group is John Hays, the national cycling champion in the 1,000-meter time trial and a graduate of Patrick Henry High School.

“We realize this is just a beginning,” Hays said. “We’re all appreciative of what Joan is trying to do. She got a late start, but for all of us, every bit helps.”

Hays has lived at home with his parents and worked at a cycling shop to make ends meet. Only the most elite Olympic-caliber athletes are able to make a living from competing. Most others receive modest support from equipment manufacturers, their national sports federations and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“We want to help the established athletes who are financially strapped,” Hansen said. “We do not want to help the athletes in the five- to six-figure financial bracket. We do not help Steve Scott, Greg Louganis, Mary Decker or Edwin Moses.

“All we want to do is complement the existing programs--fill in the missing pieces.”

Still, there is one part to this puzzle that still might appear curious: Why would someone like Hansen set aside an opportunity to erase her disappointment of 1984?

“What happened in ’84 just devastated her,” Joy Hansen said. “In a way, I don’t think she has ever gotten over it. I really think it had something to do with her not trying again.”

But Hansen dismissed her sister’s theory with a laugh.

“That had nothing to do with this year,” she said. “I know where I would have finished. That is enough for me.”

In the 1984 Olympic race, Hansen was in fifth and moving up when her mishap occurred. She tangled with Aurora Cunha of Portugal with four laps remaining and fell, just 300 meters before Decker did.

“When I started to fall, I sensed someone was falling, but I did not know it was me,” Hansen said. “I felt very sad for whoever was going down. When I realized it was me, it was ‘Oh no!’ I hit the track and knocked all the air out.

“The two thoughts that came to mind were ‘Go get ‘em, go catch back up, and get some air back in your lungs because you’re not breathing, chick.’ I thought I was calmly getting back up, running gradually and building speed, but I ended up running a (fast) 67-second lap, which took my kick out of action.”

Hansen, exhausted from her harried efforts to catch up, ran her last lap in 75 seconds and finished the race in 8:51.53. Maricica Puica of Romania was first in 8:35.96. Third place and the bronze medal went to Lynn Kanuka Williams, a former San Diego State runner from Canada, in 8:42.14. Hansen had run 8:41.43 in finishing third at the U.S. Olympic trials.

Hansen said she is confident that if she had not fallen, she would have been able to move up and win a medal. But for months, the question about what caused her fall remained for her.

In contrast to the attention paid to Decker’s fall, with its endless televised replays, few noticed Hansen’s. Even Joy, watching in the stands, missed it.

“She had a camera, and every lap, she would take shots,” Hansen said. “All of a sudden she doesn’t see me. She starts shouting, ‘Joan, you’ve lost contact!’ She had no recollection that I fell. Finally, my sister (Lynne) nudged her, ‘Joy, she fell.’ ”

After the race, Hansen, exhausted and hurting from a knee injury she sustained, tried to find out what happened.

“The coaches went asking about what happened with Mary Decker and Joan Hansen,” Hansen said. “Mary Decker got her answer in 20 minutes. Joan Hansen never got her answer.”

Not until she met Greenspan and was invited to New York to view his outtakes did she finally learn the circumstances of her fall. Although Greenspan might have been unaware of what happened, the cameras caught every step.

“Seeing the race on film was a comfort,” Hansen said. “It is not like a movie where you don’t know the outcome. But it answered a lot of questions for me.

“I could take my own feelings and put them on the film. It was neat to watch it because I had no idea what happened at the point of contact. I had an idea, but for all those months, I wondered. I was in a little bit of a fog.”

What Hansen saw was Cunha move out just in front of her. She tried to avoid her, but Cunha drifted back, the two bumped, and Hansen fell.

“I thought it was an accident,” Hansen said. “I’m sure it was a mistake.”

But Hansen was not so understanding a few weeks after the Olympics, when she and Cunha raced over 5,000 meters in a meet in Paris. Cunha was in second and Hansen third going through the final turn. Hansen said she was about to pass Cunha when Cunha suddenly veered out in front, forcing her to put her hands on Cunha’s back to avoid a fall.

This time, Hansen was so upset that she confronted Cunha after the race.

“I grabbed her arm and spun her around,” Hansen recalled. “I told her, ‘I can’t believe you did this. I’m in shock that you did this in a race.’ ”

The anger directed at Cunha was the only time during an interview that Hansen showed any real sign of disappointment or bitterness over her Olympic fall, though she does chafe a bit at the lack of media attention paid it.

“They didn’t even mention it on TV or in the newspapers the next day,” Hansen said. “It was like it never happened.”

No live interviews with Kathleen Sullivan like the one with Decker. No bitter post-race comments. No slow-motion replays.

“Life isn’t a series of instant replays,” Hansen said. “Life is what you live.”

For Hansen, that means trying to duplicate her Olympic dream by helping to build the hopes of others. Her satisfaction must come in knowing that she is helping others to succeed.

“I’ve been on an Olympic team; I’ve been a world-record holder (indoor two-mile),” Hansen said. “Whether or not I make another Olympic team is not nearly as important as seeing other athletes make an Olympic team.”