Running to Find a 2nd Chance at Life : For a Fallen Track Star on the Mend, Olympian Struggles Are Just Beginning

Alphonce Swai has known the best of times. He won a berth on the Tanzanian track team in a barefoot sprint as an unknown of 17. At 19, he lived for more than a year with Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and his family. He competed in the 1984 Olympics at 21. He became the cross-country star of Santa Monica College.

And he has known the worst of times: His marriage dissolved and his track career evaporated into a stupor of alcoholism and drug peddling.

In desperation, he sought help from the Long Beach Rescue Mission. At first, Swai, now 26, planned to stay just a few days. Instead, he entered the mission’s program for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.

Ten months later, Swai has lost his drinker’s paunch and regained his lean, athletic look. He has become a devout Christian. His bright brown eyes sparkle. He is cheerful and polite.

Running Again

Swai started running again this month. He puts in three hours of roadwork a day in morning and evening sessions. Most days, he racks up 18 to 20 miles. Swai’s goal is to return to competition and earn enough prize money as a distance runner to buy a plane ticket home to Tanzania. And then, he said, he hopes to rejoin the Tanzanian team for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

“It feels good to be back running,” he said, adding that now “I’m not just running by myself. . . . Spiritually, I’m depending on somebody.”

Swai’s father hails from the Chagga tribe and wanted his sons to stay on the family’s 200-acre coffee plantation at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. His mother is a Mbulu, a tribe that believes in a formal education.

“I went to school because I chose it,” Swai said. “That’s why I had trouble with my father. He wanted me to stay home and pick coffee. My mom wanted me to go to school.”

Ran to School

The school was 10 miles away. Instead of walking, Swai ran.

Swai graduated from high school and was working as a supervisor at a shoe factory when he entered a regional track meet in the capital of Dar es Salaam.

“I just showed up from the middle of nowhere,” he said. “I didn’t know which event to enter. I just jumped in.”

The young tribesman chose the 1,500 meters. He ran barefoot, dressed in cut-off trousers, against a field that included two members of the Tanzanian national team, with their fancy running shoes and colorful jerseys. Swai won the heat, beating his country’s best with a time of 3 minutes, 48 seconds.

The Tanzanian team’s coach was impressed. “He said, ‘Great race. What’s your name?’ ” Swai recalled. “He knew a little Swahili, so I talked to him.”

Dreamed of College

Swai said he dreamed of going to college but that it was difficult coming from a modest family that lacked official connections. The national team offered a chance to travel to countries such as Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

“When I started going out of the country, I thought I wanted to be a businessman, open a shop in my own country and help little kids to start running,” he said.

Caught Scout’s Eye

Swai attracted the attention of a U.S. college scout at the All-African Games in Nigeria. He left Africa in 1981 for the University of Oklahoma, but soon after his arrival, he said, the track coach departed amid a recruiting scandal.

Swai said he and the other African athletes were told by a university official that they were considered visitors rather than students. The athletes replied that they had come to enroll. Swai said they were given English competency tests, which none of the Africans could pass.

Contacted Embassy

“I contacted my embassy in Washington,” he said. “The embassy knew me from my running.” He said he told one embassy official that “things aren’t going well in this country. I want to go home.”

Rather than send Swai home, the official arranged for him to visit Young, who has invited foreign students to live with his family since his days as chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter.

Swai stayed with the Young family for almost two years. He said Young “helped me take some English classes at Georgia Tech. He said, ‘If you want to go to a university, you have to improve your English a little bit.’ ”

Young said by telephone that he admires Swai’s tenacity.

“I was impressed because when he was living with us, he would get up and run 10 miles or more before going to school,” Young said. “And he would work out in the afternoon as well. It was something about his character of being a long-distance runner.”

Swai left for Brevard Junior College in North Carolina, where he won the state community college cross-country championship in 1983, running five miles in less than 25 minutes.

120 Miles a Week

He dropped out to return to Tanzania to train for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. In the shadow of Kilimanjaro, he ran 120 miles a week.

Swai was disappointed with his performance at the Olympics, winning two heats but failing to advance beyond the semifinal. He said he squabbled with his coaches who, he said, had so overtrained the athletes that their muscles still ached when they stepped into the starting blocks for Olympic events.

The Olympic semifinal heat “was the worst race of my life,” he said.

After a brief return to Atlanta, Swai came back to California because the climate is akin to Tanzania’s and because he considered it a better place to train. At 23, he became Santa Monica College’s star distance runner.

Santa Monica coach Tommie Smith, the record-setting sprinter of the 1960s, said in 1985 that he had high hopes for Swai at the state junior college cross-country meet in Fresno.

“He’d better win it all,” Smith kidded. “He has no choice. I’m not going to Fresno for him to take second.”

True to Smith’s expectations, Swai set a course record at the meet in November, 1985: four miles in 19 minutes, 11 seconds.

Although successful on the track, Swai faced increasing personal turmoil.

“When I moved to California, my life started changing,” he said. At first, he drank a few friendly beers with friends. Then he said he started packing his own refrigerator with beer, downing a six-pack a day.

‘Corruptive Life’

“It’s the loneliness,” he said. “In California, I have all these African friends, and they all drink.” It’s a “very corruptive life.”

Then there was the marriage. In 1987, Swai married a woman he had met at Georgia Tech. But he said he did not know her well enough; resulting difficulties only made matters worse.

The heavy drinking made it hard for Swai to get up in the mornings. “You start hating life,” he said. “You hate yourself when you get up and can’t run. It caused great frustration.”

His track career fell apart. He lost a contract to wear a shoe manufacturer’s products.

Swai started dealing drugs, left his wife and lived with friends.

One day he made a decision. He had to leave and start over. He had to seek treatment for his alcoholism.

“This is not what I came to this country for,” he recalled thinking. He had hit bottom.

He called Young for help, and Young contacted an aide to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. The aide told Swai about the Long Beach Rescue Mission.

The mission, operated by the Rev. Wayne Teuerle and his wife, Janet, offers free meals, shelter and guidance to troubled or homeless individuals.

“When I came here, I was still smelling of alcohol from the night before,” said Swai, who enrolled in the mission’s long-term New Life program.

Swai intended to stay only briefly. But mission counselors told him that there was a solution, but that it required discipline, patience and faith.

Starting Anew

“I drink too much and I want to continue my running, but I need to start my life again,” Swai told his mission chaplain, the Rev. Jerome Hannaman.

“He said, ‘You need to get off your drinking and let God take care of your problem.’ ”

Swai said it took three months before he could admit that he is an alcoholic.

Now, he said, he has close fellowship with the dozen other men in his program. They depend on one another and pray together.

He gets up at 6 a.m. and works several hours a day at the front desk, where he is in contact with other alcoholics in need of help.

“I don’t go out that much,” he said. “Here, you’re not just working for the mission. You’re working for the Lord and on how to change your life.”

Swai said he does not consider himself too old to get back into athletic competition. Distance runners hit their peak from age 28 to 30, he said, which for Swai is still a couple of years away.

“I just want to qualify for the Olympics for my country in 1992,” he said.

Hannaman said Swai is a sharp young man but that he is not viewed as different from the many others who walk through the doors of the mission, despite his background.

“Our people are just people. Alphonce is just like anyone else,” he said.