America’s Rebirth Is on Track

The United States of America--which could sure use it--got a lift last week.

In a summer in which we come into focus as a nation that shoots down unarmed planes, in which even our own political orators hold us up as a people who have lost our way, at least we found out one thing: We can still run faster and jump farther than just about any other group on the planet.

Our industry might be in disarray, we might be getting outproduced and outsold by competitor countries, we might lose wars for the first time in our history and have a massive trade deficit but, by God, the 100-meter dash, except for one Canadian, is still safely ours. So, for the most part, are the long jump, the 200, the hurdles, the 400 and maybe even the 800.

We might have big trouble in Central America, but we’re not going to have any in South Korea. Texas banks might be failing, but not Willie Banks. We might be losing a lot of things in this country but not track meets.

That was a great track meet they had in Indianapolis last week, one of the greatest ever. That was America at its best, not only in sports but in show biz.

I mean, how about a woman who comes out in a negligee and sets world sprint records! Is that a great part for Doris Day or what?

Anybody can go out and set world records. Florence Griffith-Joyner does it with a flair. She’s the most glamorous thing seen in an athletic event since Lady Godiva. C.B. De Mille would love her.

She looks more as if she’s on her way to a photo session than a starting line. You don’t know whether she came to break a world record or model lingerie. So she does both.

Most women spend the pre-race hours working on their concentration. FloJo spends it working on her nails. She’s the first sprinter since Wilma Rudolph who could break a record and a heart at the same time, the newest America’s Sweetheart.

And she was only one of the stories the trials at Indianapolis produced.

If I were the Soviet Union, I’d boycott. It might have skipped the wrong Olympics.

For all FloJo’s theatrics, for all the marvelous performances by Carl Lewis--on a runway more suited for the breaststroke than the broad jump--one of the most heartening affirmations of the quality of our youth was turned in by a guy who never won a race, or set a record and whose fashion statement for the week was an arm cast.

If you have a heart, or, better yet, if you have a soul, you had what Greg Foster tried to do last week. In fact, what he did do.

Greg Foster’s story is wall-to-wall heartbreak--as so many Olympic stories are.

Foster is one of history’s greatest hurdlers. Once, in Switzerland, he broke the world record in the highs with a 13.03-second clocking. Unfortunately, Renaldo Nehemiah broke it by more--12.93, a mark that still stands.

It was Foster’s lot to chase Nehemiah in almost all of their races and both of them were on the world record list in 1980 when President Carter began the round of boycotts. Nehemiah had a 13.21 and Foster had a 13.27. East Germany’s Thomas Munkelt won the race, and the gold medal, at Moscow with a 13.39.

When Skeets Nehemiah became a professional football player with the San Francisco 49ers, Foster seemed to have a clear track to glory. He won at the World Games in 1983.

In ‘84, the Olympic year, he’d had the fastest time in the world for the year, 13.19, he won the trials handily and there was really no reason for him to worry about the young hurdler in Lane 8 of the Olympic final. Roger Kingdom had been third in the trials, he was only in his second year in the event and his best pre-Olympic time was 13.32.

Foster had already broken the Olympic record in the heats, but Kingdom broke it by more in the final--13.20. Foster hit one hurdle so hard he kicked it clear off the track but he lost the race by lingering at the start, anticipating a recall. He swiveled his neck in the final 4 meters to assay his position. It was second.

If Foster brooded, no one knew about it, although friends recall he was given to taking long airplane flights to nowhere--just getting on a plane to clear the cobwebs out of his head. Some people sit up in trees to get away from the world, Greg sat up in 747s.

When Nehemiah returned from a mediocre football career, Foster beat him in an indoor race and, when Nehemiah came up to congratulate him, Foster brushed him aside. “He didn’t recognize him from the front,” a friend sympathized.

More likely, all those years had festered in Foster. For him, the name should have been Renaldo Nemesis.

Once again, this year, Greg Foster seemed to be on his way, at last, to the high part of the Olympic victory stand when, about a month ago, in a training exercise in which you station the hurdles 5 feet apart instead of 10--rather like a ballplayer swinging three bats on his way to the plate so that swinging only one will seem like child’s play--Greg missed the most important hurdle of his life.

He crashed into the crowded forest of hurdles, fell to the ground and shattered his left arm. The bone came through the flesh.

They put it back together like an Erector set but Foster knew that, one more fall, and he’d never comb his hair with it again.

Greg showed up at Indianapolis anyway. For a runner, the only thing worse than breaking a leg is breaking an arm. You run with your arms, too. Incredibly enough, he won his first heat, finished third in his next. In the semifinals, the glass slipper cracked. He was jostled and, rather than risk further injury, pulled up.

Still, it was a great moment in Olympic sport. So, I don’t think we have to worry about our young people. I think the Soviets do.