Track and Field / Randy Harvey : Aouita Has Something to Prove

In the United States, sports heroes such as Orel Hershiser, Joe Montana and Brian Boitano go to Disney World when they win.

Morocco’s Said Aouita went there when he lost. And he didn’t get paid to do it.

Aouita was track and field’s biggest bust at the 1988 Summer Olympics. He was favored to win the 800 and the 1,500. Some people, maybe even Aouita himself, thought he could also win the 5,000 if he tried.

But he came up lame, finished third in the 800 and dropped out after the first round of the 1,500. Dragging his solo bronze medal behind him, he went home to Casablanca.

Home is the villa that King Hassan II gave Aouita after he became Morocco’s first Olympic gold medalist ever in 1984, when he won the 5,000 meters at Los Angeles. Reports were that the king also gave him $50,000.

Those were the days when Aouita couldn’t walk down any street in Morocco without being followed by adoring youngsters. Adults loved him, too. The rapid train between Rabat and Casablanca became known unofficially as “The Aouita.” Even the King called it that.

But after the 1988 Summer Olympics, Aouita received no hero’s welcome when he returned home. He was treated like a loser. The King invited him and the other Moroccan Olympians to the palace for dinner, but Aouita wasn’t special. Not even his own train whistled for him anymore.

Disgusted with the fickle fans, Aouita took his wife and 2-year-old daughter to Florida for a month’s vacation.

“The people of Morocco are used to me winning every race,” he said. “When I win, everybody is with me. If I don’t, they speak bad of me.”

Aouita, 28, returned to the United States last week, but this is no vacation. To redeem himself for his performance in Seoul, he has entered five indoor meets at four different distances.

“I want to prove again that I am the best,” he said. “If I want to prove that I am the best, I must break world records.”

So far, he is zero for two.

But no one who saw him win the 3,000 in the Millrose Games at New York Friday night or the 5,000 in the Mobil 1 Invitational at Fairfax, Va., Sunday afternoon can say they didn’t get their money’s worth. That also goes for the promoters, who each reportedly paid him $20,000 to run in their meets.

His time of 7:47.07 at New York wasn’t sensational, but, considering it was only his second indoor race and his first on boards, neither was it exactly unimpressive. And his victory was dramatic. After losing the lead to U.S. Olympian Doug Padilla on the final lap, Aouita overtook him coming off the last curve to win.

Less than 48 hours later, running virtually alone for the last half of the race because a fatigued Padilla left his legs in New York, a remarkably unfatigued Aouita ran a 13:22.56 in the 5,000 at Fairfax, missing the world record by a little more than two seconds.

Now that he has a better idea of what the U.S. indoor circuit is all about, Aouita said that he believes records will fall in his next three appearances--Friday night in the Vitalis Meadowlands Invitational at East Rutherford, N.J., Feb. 17 in the Times/Eagle Games at the Forum and Feb. 24 in the Mobil U.S. national indoor championships at Madison Square Garden.

“The crowds indoors are fantastic,” he said after Sunday’s race. “It’s like being in the theater. It’s like acting.”

If it really were, he’d receive more curtain calls than Sir Laurence Olivier.

“The crowds have just taken to him,” Padilla told The Washington Post. “He’s laying it on the line, going for a record every time, and he just dumped the rest of us.

“Also, I think there is something about people who make brash statements, then go out and do it. Americans, more than any other people, seem to take to the guy who says, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’ then does it.”

When Track & Field News named Aouita athlete of the year for 1985, the editors collected some of his brash statements.

“If Henry Rono set four world records in one season, why not me?” Aouita once asked.

“I want to hold every world record from the 1,500 to the 10,000,” he said on another occasion.

And on still another, he said, “I want to get inside my opponents and blow them up, massacre them.”

Like Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath before him, Aouita usually delivers. When the all-time great runners, such as Finland’s Paavo Nurmi and Czechoslovakia’s Emil Zatopek, are listed, Aouita should be among them.

Outdoors, he was ranked No. 1 in the world in the 800 and No. 2 in the 1,500 last year. Four times previously, he was ranked No. 1 in the 5,000. He won in that distance at the 1984 Summer Olympics and the 1987 world championships. Besides the 5,000, he also holds world records at 1,500 meters, 2,000 meters and two miles. He has the second-fastest time ever in the mile and the 3,000.

What he doesn’t have is a fez full of Olympic gold medals.

He said last year that he would correct that by winning three more to go along with the one he won in 1984. Last week, he argued that he never said any such thing. In fact, he said that he never intended to enter the 5,000, only the 800 and the 1,500.

The press, he said, put words in his mouth. That’s entirely possible. His mouth is an easy target.

“I am not Superman,” he said.

So it was silly to think that he could have won three gold medals at Seoul.

Well, Aouita wouldn’t say that. If not for a hamstring injury suffered during a workout two days before the 800 final, he said that he could have done it.

“The 800, I knew I would win, no problem,” he said. “The 1,500, you know. I’m the best. You know nobody can beat me. The 5,000? I have broken the world record, I have won the Olympics and the world championships.”

The message is that Aouita is still the best, and he is here to prove it. Not to the people of the United States, but to the people of Morocco.

“He is under tremendous pressure from the people of Morocco,” one of the sport’s most astute observers, Italian journalist Robert Quercetani, told Track & Field News in 1986.

“Everyone expects so much of him all the time, and I’m sure he feels such expectations. He comes from a virgin land in terms and track and field honors, and I feel that sometimes he is nervous because of that.”

Last Sunday at Fairfax, Aouita was asked if he called home after his come-from-behind victory in the Millrose Games. He said that he had, and that, while the race was not on television in Casablanca, his family had already heard the news reports.

What was the reaction?

Aouita smiled. “They thought the race was a little close,” he said.