He’s Faced Highest Hurdle : Drug-Free Harris Seeks Another Chance to Compete Today

When Danny Harris told friends he had agreed to be interviewed by a reporter, they warned him that the article might be negative. He laughed. What could anyone write about him that he has not confessed in Alcoholics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous meetings?

“If all you do is write, ‘Danny Harris is an addict. Danny Harris is an addict. Danny Harris is an addict,’ 100 times and nothing else, I won’t complain,” he said. “Because every word of it would be true.”

Talking one afternoon last week while sitting on the grass at the edge of the track at Cal State Long Beach, occasionally interrupting the conversation for stretching exercises, Harris, 27, looks no less physically fit than he did when he was ranked No. 1 in the world in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles in 1990.

Almost 18 months into his four-year suspension for testing positive for cocaine in the winter of 1992, he works out daily, more because he enjoys the challenge than the possibility he might be allowed this summer to resume his once brilliant career. His reinstatement hearing with USA Track & Field is scheduled for today.

“If God doesn’t want me to run again, as much as I miss it, I can accept that and go on,” he said. “But I have a good feeling about the hearing because my life is good. I’m not the same person I was before.”

Harris went from high school in Perris, Calif., to Iowa State to play defensive back for the football team, but his special talent was running the intermediate hurdles.

No teen-ager has come within seven-tenths of a second of the world junior record of 48.02 seconds he set at 18 in the 1984 U.S. Olympic trials at the Coliseum. Later that summer, again at the Coliseum, he became the Olympic silver medalist.

The man who finished ahead of him in that race was Edwin Moses, and had it not been for the continuing presence of the greatest performer in the history of the event, Harris would have reached the top much sooner than he did. Even so, when Moses’ 107-race winning streak came to an end at Madrid in 1987, Harris was the one who crossed the finish line first.

“That was my day,” he said.

He would have others, but there also were disappointments. He was second to Moses in a photo finish in the 1987 World Championships at Rome, fifth in the 1988 Olympic trials at Indianapolis, fifth in the 1991 World Championships at Tokyo.

“After that race at Tokyo, I was terribly hurt,” he said. “I came home, got off the airplane and used cocaine. I needed to moderate my feelings. What better way to do it than get loaded? The behavior I was displaying was that of an addict. But I was in deep, deep, deep denial.”

Already a user of alcohol and marijuana, Harris said his downfall was accelerated the first time he tried cocaine after his failure to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team in 1988.

“I was at a real low point,” he said. “I had these friends, and they smoked weed. That’s basically why I hung around them, for the weed. They had some cocaine. I was there for two or three hours, drinking beer, and then I broke down. I liked it.

“I didn’t do it again for months, but the next time I did it, I had a craving for it. As time went on, it got harder and harder to pick the time I wanted to do it. The drug was beginning to dictate when I would do it. I had the illusion I could control it, but the cocaine was in control of my life.”

Those who had been closest to him as a young man--his grandmother, brother and sister--were not aware that he was using cocaine, but they did know that he no longer was dependable. Having helped support the family for years with his track and field earnings, he suddenly began borrowing money and failing to repay it.

His girlfriend, a nurse, suspected his addiction.

“I couldn’t hide it from her,” he said. “She could see the deterioration of my mind, my body and my soul. I would say, ‘I’m going to the store,’ and come back three hours later. I would say that I would pick her up after work and then not show up.”

On the track, however, he could still summon the speed and strength necessary to be among the best in his event. In 1990, he was the best, winning 15 consecutive races and running under 48 seconds a record nine times. Moses had never done that more than seven times in one season.

Only Harris knew how he tortured himself.

“I knew I had practice on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday,” he said. “So my head would say, ‘It’s OK to use (cocaine) on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.’ But it wasn’t.

“There’s that ability to push yourself and not let your mind wander, to be on the track for four or five hours and not think anything of it. At the end, I couldn’t do that.”

The end, or perhaps it was the beginning, occurred after he was tested during the 1992 national indoor championships, when he received a UPS package, stamped confidential, from the U.S. governing body for track and field.

“It was on paper, right in front of me,” he said. “I couldn’t dispute it. I was an addict.”

He lost his career and his contract with a shoe company, which forced him to give up the house in Orange that he had saved for six years to buy. Even more painful to him, he embarrassed his family. But, in retrospect, it might have been the best day of his life.

“That was God working in my life,” he said, “doing for me what I hadn’t been able to do for myself.”

Harris entered the drug and alcohol treatment center at Charter Hospital in Orange County, staying for 28 days. It did not take. He stopped using cocaine, but he resumed drinking.

“My girlfriend told me she could see me slipping away again,” he said. “I would work out, come home, eat and then fight the demons all night long. Sometimes, I won. Sometimes, I lost.”

But then he was introduced to the Castle East program in South-Central Los Angeles, where he stayed for 104 days.

After the first month, supervisors put him in a chair in the middle of the basement, surrounded by all 51 of the other patients, who told him who they saw when they looked at him. It was not an Olympic silver medalist.

“They told me I had a better-than attitude, that I thought I was special,” he said. “They let me know I wasn’t special or I wouldn’t be sitting there with them. They picked my bones and made me strong. They knocked me down 20 or 30 pegs, and I love them for it.

“I used to think Olympic medals and world rankings and the car you drive and the house you own and the neighborhood you live in are what made Danny Harris what he was. But now I have real balance in my life for the first time. By the grace of God, I’ve been able to stay clean, and I have gained appreciation for life and love and family. Now, I have serenity.”

He is working in a Sober Living Center for Women in Lynwood. The other day, while accompanying one of the women to court, he realized he was being watched by a man who recognized him as a world-class athlete.

“Before, I would have crossed the street to avoid him because I knew that I was living a lie,” Harris said. “Today, I can look him right in the eye and shake his hand because my life is about truth. That’s the gift I’ve got.”