BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 10 : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : A FATHER-SON ACT OF COURAGE

Four years ago, British 400-meter runner Derek Redmond pulled out of his Olympic preliminary-round race 1 1/2 minutes before it was to start, convinced that he couldn’t run with a bad Achilles’ tendon, which already had undergone five operations. Since then, he promised himself that, if he made it to the Olympics again, he would finish his race--no matter what.

No-matter-what happened Monday in his semifinal heat when Redmond pulled a hamstring less than halfway around the track.

Hopping on one foot, Redmond kept going, at a pace slower than a walk, while the building applause of 65,000 in Montjuic Stadium escorted him to the finish. And his father, Jim, worked his way, from his seat high in the stands, down to the field, physically supporting Derek down the homestretch.

“You don’t need any accreditation (to be on the field) in an emergency,” Jim Redmond said. “First of all, I don’t speak Spanish, so I didn’t understand (the stadium security guards trying to stop him). But I wasn’t going to listen, anyway.”

Said Derek Redmond: “Whether people thought I was an idiot or people thought I was a hero, I was going to finish. I wasn’t doing it for the crowd. I was doing it for myself.”

The official results labeled Redmond’s race “AB”--abandoned. But it was anything but that.

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.