BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 15 : Being World’s Eighth-Best Is Still Worth Something

It was a dumb race. These guys could have been arrested for loitering. Guys going to the electric chair moved faster than the Olympians ran their last mile Saturday night. The best milers in the world looked like a bunch of guys waiting for a bus.

They handed the race to the Spaniard, Fermin Cacho Ruiz, to the hysteria of the crowd--to say nothing of its considerable surprise.

They turned the first lap in 1:02.25--which the 1908 winner, Mel Sheppard, might not have had too much trouble keeping up with. The second lap was even slower, 1:04.83. The Olympic walkers do that.

You got the feeling these guys had forgotten something at the start line and were trying to make up their minds whether to go back after it.

The race was being led by the venerable Joseph Chesire, a 35-year-old Kenyan who has been in three Olympics.

It looked more like a parade than a race. Why the three fleet Kenyans in the race didn’t pick up the pace will never be known. David Kibet had beaten this field in Oslo in July, but he ran like a man hobbled Saturday night.

Kibet got beat; the race favorite, the great Noureddine Morceli, got beat, and the American in it got beat.

The race time was 3:40.12. Bear in mind, Sebastian Coe set the Olympic 1,500-meter record of 3:32.53 eight years ago, and Said Aouita set the world record of 3:29.46 seven years ago.

To put it in perspective, Fermin Cacho’s 3:40-plus would not have won the 1,500 in the 1960 Olympics, which was clocked in 3:35.6, and in fact, would not have even gotten him the bronze medal in those Games. It would not have earned the bronze medal in any Olympics since.

What they did was turn the clock back 40 years--to the last time an Olympic 1,500 was over 3:40.

Jim Spivey was one of those swindled by the race. He didn’t win. He didn’t expect to. He’s not fast. There’s no world or national record in his dossier. He used to depend on a kick, but that is useless in metric miles that are becoming complicated sprints.

He’s old. The best he’s ever done in international competition is a bronze medal. The best he’s ever done in an Olympics is fifth.

In the fight game, he’d be listed as “strictly an opponent.” Beating him looks good on your record, but it’s not hard to do. A trial horse.

He didn’t even make the Olympic Games in ’88. He won the 1982 NCAA but not much since.

But Spivey is always there, always trying. He ran, like, the 35,000th mile or metric mile race of his life here Saturday night in a career that began in high school in 1975. He has logged more miles than a Tijuana taxi. The fact that he’s on the Olympic team is a tribute to his spirit. He has worked harder at his sport then any peasant in a rice paddy could. He keeps tab of every step he takes.

He’s not glamorous. He’s not Carl Lewis or even Said Aouita. If he got in a plane crash with the Olympic team, the headlines would say: “Carl Lewis and 30 Others Killed in Crash.” Jim Spivey would be one of the “others.” His name might be misspelled.

Shoe companies are not chasing him down the street to sign him. His face doesn’t gleam at you from 100 billboards in this corner of Spain. Or any other corner of the world.

In baseball, he’d probably be a utilityman. Meet directors seek out Jim Spivey to fill out a field, not to draw a crowd. He doesn’t draw crowds.

He didn’t expect to win the Olympic 1,500 because we never win the Olympic 1,500. The last time an American won this classic Olympic race was--are you ready?--1908.

We have sent some great milers to these Games. When we talk of great American milers, the conversation turns to Jim Ryun, Wes Santee, Glenn Cunningham, Bill Bonthron, Gene Venzke.

None of them won at the Olympics. We’ve gotten only three medals in this race since 1920--all silvers. Cunningham got a silver in 1936, Robert McMillen in 1952 and Ryun in 1968.

Spivey not only races in the shadow of history, until recently he raced in the shadow of Steve Scott. In fact, Spivey startled the track world in 1984 at the Olympic trials when he beat Scott.

Then he ran fifth in those Olympics. This was the era of the Great Brits, Sebastian Coe, who set the Olympic record in the race that still stands, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram.

Spivey was not really supposed to be in these Olympic Games. He’s 32 years old. There can’t be much tread left on the wheels. He’s as slim as a nine-iron, not tall (5 feet 10) and slight (135 pounds). But Spivey has been devoting his life to running. A man who works, sleeps, trains, dreams of these events for 17 years, who runs 60 miles a week, eats what you’re supposed to eat and keeps a log on every workout he takes, has made two out of three Olympic teams and finished within a step of making the third team.

As usual in his event, the Europeans and North Africans were the marquee names. There was even a surprising runner from Qatar, of all places.

There was the all-everything from Algeria, Noureddine Morceli. He has been expected to break Aouita’s world record for two years. James Calvin Spivey was as unnoticed in this company as a butler in a palace.

He finished where everyone said he would--eighth. But he was there.

Like a lot of the others, Spivey upbraided himself after the race for allowing that freight train pace, not taking command: “My coach told me, ‘In a slow race, you got to be in front.’ But I thought I was right where I was supposed to be, fourth. Yes, the Kenyans let it go too slow.”

So did he. When, he was asked, did he know it was over for him, too late to kick? “About 250 meters from the end,” Spivey said. “The runners started to go by me. They all had something left, which they shouldn’t have.”

So, Spain’s Fermin Cacho ranks with El Cid in Spanish affections today. He won the glamour race of the Olympics, the most visible gold medal of all.

Can you call Spivey, Morceli, Kibet--or the patriarchal Joseph Chesire--”losers”?

Listen! Are you the best runner in your neighborhood. Or have you ever been? How about the best in your city? Your state?

Now, add your country, and Jim Spivey comes into focus. He has been, certifiably, the best miler in America--via Olympic trials--two out of the last three Olympics.

He was one of the 12 best runners of the mile in the world Saturday night. So, it turned out there were seven better. In the whole world.

The Jim Spiveys are what the Olympics are about, quite as much as the Carl Lewises, Kevin Youngs, Mike Marshes and Dream Teams.

Baron De Coubertin, no less, said the important part of the Olympics was not the winning but the taking part. Our Win-Only society mocks that.

But of the 10,000 athletes in an Olympics, only a handful come away with a gold medal. I like to think a Jim Spivey is, in a way a surrogate for all those who chased the winners, all the non-Dream Teams. He did all the things he had to do. He paid the price, won the trials, passed the qualifying, placed in the heats.

He’s one of those guys you look out the window on a wintry morning and see going down the street, bundled in sweat clothes running interval paces, focused, concentrating.

He made the finals again. How many of us do that?

As he peeled off his numbered jersey after his unsuccessful medal chase at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday, his face gray with fatigue and regret, his body streaming with sweat, he was asked if he were intending to quit. He looked startled. “Quit? Oh, no,” he said. “I’m very encouraged. I’m in great shape. I love to run. I love to train.”

What about Atlanta in ‘96? Spivey got a light in his eyes. “Well, I’ll be kind of old, 36. But you never know.”

After all, there are only seven guys in the world better. How many of us would like to be able to tell the guys on the corner that?