U.S. Sprinter Outruns Fear to Win Gold

They nearly amputated the feet of the world’s fastest woman.

Afflicted with Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition that causes her skin to peel, her hair to fall out and her feet to become swollen and bloody, Gail Devers, 25, a former UCLA runner who feared she would never again walk, won the Olympic gold medal Saturday in the 100-meter dash.

A five-woman photo finish revealed that a last-instant lunge by Devers won the race for her by 1/100 of a second over Juliet Cuthbert, a University of Texas student competing for Jamaica.

“I wouldn’t wish my disease on anyone,” said Devers, who lives in Van Nuys. “But now I know there is no obstacle that I cannot get over.”

Massive doses of radiation have been used to treat Devers, who, confronted as recently as a year ago with the possibility of double amputation, spent three weeks under doctor’s orders having her parents carry her around the house, so as to keep her feet from touching the ground.

Terrified that she was having a relapse, a trembling Devers told her coach after Saturday’s semifinal race that she could not feel her feet pressing against the starting blocks.

“Bobby! I can’t feel my leg!” Devers called to Bob Kersee, who had heard similar panic in Devers’ voice the night before.

“What’s wrong?” Kersee asked.

“The medicine isn’t working!” she replied.

Devers, on prescription, takes a synthetic-thyroid medicine. Her flesh had again begun to flake and she also felt a tingling in her right hip.

During an anxiety attack on the eve of the race, Devers told Kersee that she wanted to lock the door of her room and not come out. She had “involuntary shakes,” Kersee said, and he could see that Devers was unnerved by her recurring skin rash.

Her physical therapist, Dr. Robert Forster of Santa Monica, when asked if such symptoms could be attributable to the 86-degree temperature or to anxiety, said: “It’s impossible to be sure.”

Her coach preferred to take no chances. After Devers had won the 100 meters in 10.82 seconds, Kersee interrupted the Olympic champion’s press conference after two questions to rush Devers to her doctor, causing something of a ruckus.

Ironically, Devers’ response to the first question, “What does winning the gold medal mean to you?” had been:

“It means that my Graves’ disease is over.”

That was not the conclusion Devers had drawn during last month’s U.S. Olympic trials at New Orleans, where muscle spasms and outbreaks of eczema drove her into the arms of teammate Jackie Joyner-Kersee, her coach’s wife, saying: “It’s starting all over again.”

Skin burn, nausea, blinding migraine headaches and wild weight fluctuation had tormented Devers since 1988, shortly after she was eliminated in the semifinals of the Olympic 100-meter hurdles at the Seoul Olympics.

Known more for her hurdling than her sprinting--she is the U.S. record-holder in the 100 hurdles--Devers also is entered in that event here, later this week. But Kersee said: “If she still has the shakes, we’ll have to see about that.”

Teasing teammates once called her “Shaky” when Devers would occasionally lose muscle control or twitch. The jokes stopped the day Devers’ leg cramps became so severe that she collapsed on the UCLA track, lost consciousness and had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital.

Months of conflicting diagnoses ultimately came to an end when Devers was found to have Graves’ disease, a condition that also is shared by President Bush and his wife, Barbara. Radiation therapy began, leaving Devers weakened and nauseated. She suffered from an enlarged thyroid gland, the side effects of which were numerous. Simply looking into a mirror was often too much to bear for Devers, whose reflection revealed ugly blotches, bulging eyes and a scalp left quilt-like by patches of bald skin.

Although she attempted to stay in training, at times wearing five pairs of socks, Devers’ bleeding feet became so swollen that she needed scissors to free herself from the socks.

One doctor’s conditional treatment of Devers in the spring of 1991 was that her parents, who live in San Diego, put her under what Gail called “house arrest,” with instructions to keep her off her feet at all times. Her father carried Devers piggyback to the bathroom, where her mother would bathe her.

Eventually, use of the synthetic-thyroid prescription eased her pain.

“I faked out my body to make it think I still have a thyroid,” Devers said.

Determination has always been a praised trait of Devers, since her Sweetwater High School days in National City, Calif., and there was little reason to suspect that the runner was in anything but peak shape, psychologically and physically, when she tore off a time of 11.12 in Saturday night’s semifinal heat at Barcelona’s Estadi Olimpic.

Although there were four times faster in the two heats, only Cuthbert had broken 11 seconds, and from an outsider’s vantage point Devers appeared to be in perfect form. Little did anyone in the audience of 65,000 know that she actually was in complete distress, and had been since the previous day.

Yet she called upon some reserve, or some resolve, or most likely both, to overcome her growing pain and fears.

As she put it: “I wanted to race more than anyone else.”

Certainly she wanted it more at the very end, when, after leaving her adversaries behind for much of the race, Devers glanced across from Lane 1 and saw life in the fast lanes. Side by side, Cuthbert, Irina Privalova of the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union), Gwen Torrence of the United States and Merlene Ottey of Jamaica were relentlessly pulling even, until suddenly the five women formed as straight a formation as soldiers on parade.

Devers’ arms were churning. Her scarlet fingernails--nearly as long as her gold-medal predecessor Flo-Jo’s--were flashes of color by her side.

The finish line was dead ahead. The race not only was anybody’s to win, with a stride or two to go, but Devers had as much chance to place fifth and go away empty-handed as she had to have a gold medallion hanging from her neck.

She ducked her head. She thrust it forward.

And the white headband she wore as a barrette crossed the finish line first.

Was Gail Devers indeed the “world’s fastest woman,” an honorary title usually accorded the winner of the 100 dash? Not even she knew. No one, not even her opponents, knew the outcome of the race until a film of the race was examined and the official results were posted on the stadium scoreboard.

Devers sprang into the air in joy.

And when she landed, hard, on the Barcelona track, feet first, it didn’t hurt a bit.

OTHER OLYMPICS COVERAGE: A6, C1, C6-13