Track and Field Becomes Merely a Really Big Shoe

The World Track and Field Championships are over, and the results are in. The team sponsored by Nike (otherwise known as the United States) won the most medals with 26. The team sponsored by Reebok (more commonly known as Russia) came in second, with 16. Puma, Adidas and Keds were far behind.

Athletes still do the running in track meets, but shoe companies are the ones running the sport. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the best track meet of the year, which concluded Sunday. To be sure, anyone who didn’t blink during ABC’s coverage of the meet will remember moments such as Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s stirring victory over Germany’s Sabine Braun in the heptathlon, or the two kisses Primo Nebiolo planted on Butch Reynolds, a man to whom Nebiolo owes $27.3 million.

But, by and large, this was a track meet where the shoe was the story. The big companies made sure of that. Nations don’t hold news conferences anymore, shoe companies do. You want to find an athlete away from the track, you first have to figure out what kind of shoes he or she wears, then call the representative of that company. Some day soon, when an athlete wins a gold medal, they won’t raise the flag of the country, they’ll simply salute the Nike swoosh.

Nike had a very interesting experience here. In addition to all the victories by athletes in its clothes or shoes, the following things happened: Olympic gold medalist Quincy Watts’s Nike fell apart during the 400 meters, causing him to finish a very disappointing fourth; U.S. steeplechaser Mark Croghan’s insole came loose the first time he went through the water jump, bothering him the rest of his race; and, far away from Gottlieb-Daimler Stadium, at a downtown train station, sections of a Michael Johnson billboard began peeling away. It didn’t take long for the media to reinvent the Nike slogan: Just Glue It.

Shoes also made news by coming off. A 5,000-meter runner from Australia named Peter O’Donoghue took his first step when the gun went off in a qualifying heat and realized his shoe didn’t come with him. It was a Nike. O’Donoghue scurried back to it, put it on, and dashed off, hoping to catch the others. He never did. When he finished, he had six new blisters.

“I feel like such an idiot,” he said.

In the men’s 10,000 meters, Kenya’s Moses Tanui got so angry when Ethiopia’s Haile Gebresilasie kept stepping on his heels that he kicked off his left shoe in protest on the final lap. Tanui is no slouch; he won the 1991 world championship, and here, with one shoe off and one shoe on, finished second by a half-second to the Ethiopian. When Gebresilasie tried to congratulate him after the race, Tanui picked up his shoe and shoved it in his opponent’s face.

Note to Nike: you’re blameless on this one. Nike outfits the Kenyan team, but it doesn’t necessarily supply the shoes. Tanui wears Superga, an Italian shoe that presumably has no slogan.

U.S. marathoner Kim Jones also got angry when a Chinese runner kept kicking her Nikes in their race last week. But instead of taking off a shoe with 13 miles remaining, she did the more prudent thing: she turned around and slapped the woman.

Don’t for a moment think that everyone wears Nikes. When U.S. decathlete Dan O’Brien received his gold medal, he laughed and put his hand over the Nike patch on his U.S. warmup. It was just for a minute, as long as it took the photographers to snap their pictures. O’Brien is a Reebok guy. To the company’s great relief, this time there were no mishaps in the pole vault pit. But it does get confusing. Nike sponsors the U.S. team, which gives O’Brien the uniform and warmup he wore here. But Reebok is responsible for his feet -- and his bank account.

Occasionally, a statement was made that didn’t involve shoes. Take Jon Drummond, the character who left a comb in his hair as he ran the first leg of the gold-medal-winning U.S. 4x100-meter relay. Opinion is split on this guy: Some people, hoping to breathe life into the moribund sport of track and field in the United States, love his act; others just think he’s crazy.

Drummond’s alter-ego is Joyner-Kersee, who has no act, but more gold medals than Drummond could hope to earn in his career. What Joyner-Kersee did here with her come-from-behind victory in the heptathlon was ensure that when people think of her, they will no longer see her as some kind of machine. She became human the other night -- someone who makes mistakes, someone who actually might lose.

The stadium was rocking with 50,000 Germans waving flags and singing Braun’s name as the athletes lined up for the 800 meters. Braun didn’t even have to beat Joyner-Kersee; she just had to lose to her by less than half a second, and the gold medal would be hers.

“We’re in Germany, this is her homeland, and all I could hear was “Sabine! Sabine!’ ” Joyner-Kersee said. “And all I could think of was, “Jackie! Jackie!’ Mentally, I could not let them get to me.”

There is no kinder soul in track and field than Joyner-Kersee, but, on that night, she methodically blew away Braun in the 800. Something about the scene got to Joyner-Kersee, a black American from East St. Louis, Ill. There have been other battles between German and American athletes on German soil, and some have gone the same way. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is no Jesse Owens, but, as she said, there was just something about the moment that touched her.

“There was no way I was going to lose to her, here, of all places,” Joyner-Kersee said. “There was no way I was going to lose to a German in Germany. No way. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

And the best thing about it was, Joyner-Kersee’s performance had absolutely nothing to do with what kind of shoes she was wearing.