He Hurdles Pratfalls of Unlucky Life

You wouldn’t give a dog act, or Karnow’s Monks, the spot on the bill Greg Foster got in life.

Hurdles champion between the eras of Skeets Nehemiah and Roger Kingdom is the kind of downplay only orphans of sport like Jess Willard--between the eras of Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey--or the handful of guys who came between the eras of Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, or Red Grange and Tom Harmon, get to put up with.

Greg Foster always had a lock on No. 2. In vaudeville, he’d be the guy who’d get to say, “How hot was it?” or, “No, Mr. Bones, why do firemen wear red suspenders?”

When Renaldo Nehemiah retired from track and field to try pro football with the San Francisco 49ers, every guy with a stopwatch thought that Greg Foster had a clear track to the top. For Foster, the name should have been Renaldo Nemesis. When Nehemiah broke the world record at Zurich in 1981--12.93 seconds, a high-hurdles mark that still stands--Greg Foster was second in 13.03, which is still the best non-winning mark of all time in the event.

In 1984, Greg Foster came into his glory. Nemesis was gone, and Foster’s only competition seemed to be a clock. He never lost a race all year coming up to the Olympics. He even seemed about to do something that Nehemiah, because of the Carter boycott, never got to do--win an Olympic gold medal.

In the U.S. Olympic track and field trials that year, Foster won all 4 of his races, heats and final, with rather ridiculous ease. In the final, no one paid too much attention to the collegian who finished third, Roger Kingdom.

In the Olympics, the whole world paid attention. Kingdom won the gold by less than a foot. For Foster, it was Kingdom come. Nemesis II.

But Greg Foster had started that Olympic final under the impression that he had jumped the gun. He began to slow down, listening for the recall that never came. When he realized it wasn’t coming and gathered himself up, he was done in by the run-in--the last 10 meters after the last hurdle. But he lost by only 3/100ths of a second, 13.23 to 13.20.

He beat Kingdom twice in three races in Europe that fall and then closed him out in indoor meets that winter. That made the L.A. outcome even sadder.

Foster took dead aim on the 1988 Olympics. He won at the world championships in Rome in ’87 and had stepped up his preparation for the trials at Indianapolis.

Just 18 days before those trials, on a track at Cal Poly Pomona, Foster had set up what hurdlers call the “lead leg drill.” This calls for the hurdles to be lowered in height from 42 inches to 33, and spaced only 5 meters apart, instead of 10, for a technique test.

His leg caught in the unfamiliar pattern and he tumbled heavily to the ground. He shattered both bones in his left forearm. His luck was holding. It stayed bad.

Greg Foster showed up at Indianapolis with his arm in a cast. It also had so many screws and plates in it, you could have played “Lady of Spain” on it with a hammer.

Running is balance--and Greg Foster didn’t have any. He was jumping hurdles with the world’s best athletes when he would have had trouble climbing on a bus. One of the great athletic feats of all time was his winning a heat--in 13.58--and finishing third in another with an arm he couldn’t have combed his hair or opened a letter with. It was a little like Venus de Milo winning a tennis match.

His luck, and his equilibrium, ran out in the semifinals and he knocked over more barriers than a drunk trying to sneak up to bed in the dark. He was a DNF. The Olympic dream was over once again.

When Roger Kingdom won his second gold medal at Seoul, he began to be a legend in his own right. His time of 12.98 was the fastest run in the Olympic highs but he was to pay tribute to Foster when he noted that he would have trouble taking aim at Nehemiah’s world mark.

“When Skeets was running his world records, he had Greg Foster to push him,” he said. “I’m going to have to do it by myself.”

Maybe not. On the night of Jan. 20, one of the great hurdles fields of history will compete in the Sunkist meet at the Sports Arena. Roger Kingdom, Greg Foster, Tonie Campbell, the bronze medalist at Seoul after finishing fifth at Los Angeles, and Andre Phillips, the man who broke Edwin Moses’ Olympic string and the only man in modern history to try out for both the 110-meter high hurdles and the 400 intermediates in the trials.

Greg Foster thinks Roger Kingdom will have someone to push him--Greg Foster. He might have the spot on the bill of the guy who has to wave an American flag or do bird calls to get attention but he wants all these heroes--and the world--to know one thing: They had Greg Foster to beat before they got where they are. And it was never easy.