Forgive and Forget : After 21 Years, Sprinters Leave Past Behind and Make Their Way in Teaching Others

When Howard Cosell introduced Rey Robinson to a nationwide television audience on Aug. 31, 1972, the ABC announcer said, “This young man will be scarred by this all his life.”

“This” was the failure earlier that day of U.S. 100-meter runners Robinson and Eddie Hart to arrive at the starting line in time for their quarterfinal heats during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, and, for years afterward, Robinson believed Cosell was right.

Upon returning home, Robinson quit track and field, dropped in and out of school at Florida A&M;, where he had starred as a sprinter, and drifted, failing tryouts with three pro football teams before deciding to enter the trials for the ’76 Olympics, which resulted in another failure.

“This latest heartbreak doomed Rey to several years of near vagrancy,” wrote former ABC producer Terry O’Neil in his 1990 book, “The Game Behind The Game.”

“He wandered through various jobs--flipping burgers, cooking soul-food ribs, mopping and hauling as a janitor. Tired of being asked about Munich, he used pseudonyms and stopped mentioning track on his work applications.”

But, O’Neil wrote, Robinson pointed his life in the right direction when he again tried to earn a berth on the U.S. team for the 1980 Summer Olympics, although he was unsuccessful. Those trials might have been a senseless exercise for some athletes because the U.S. team was boycotting the Moscow Games, but they served as a catharsis for Robinson, who returned to college afterward, earned his B.A. and began working toward a master’s degree.

The aftermath was not painless for Hart, but he already had a degree from UC Berkeley in 1972 and did not have as much difficulty putting the incident behind him, perhaps because he was three years older and more mature than Robinson. Hart also earned some consolation when he remained in Munich to anchor the U.S. 400-meter relay team to a gold medal.

The U.S. sprint coach, Stan Wright, said recently he believes Robinson was upset because the decision had been made before the team arrived in Munich that he would not run the relay, and that it was because of those hard feelings that Robinson was so quick to blame Wright for the 100-meter mix-up, something Hart never did publicly.

In O’Neil’s book, Robinson still expressed some bitterness toward Wright, but, in an interview three years later with NBC, Robinson said he no longer held the coach responsible.

“When I did that interview with NBC, I decided that would be the last one,” Robinson said recently from his home in Tampa, Fla. “It’s been 20 years since that incident. I don’t think about it any more.”

Both former sprinters are involved in education, Hart as a health, physical education and recreation teacher at Laney College near Oakland and Robinson as an HIV-AIDS counselor for Hillsborough County, Fla., junior high schools. Robinson also serves as an assistant coach for sprinters and jumpers at the University of South Florida.

Asked about Wright’s induction Saturday into the Track and Field Hall of Fame, Robinson said: “I think Stan Wright is a good coach and a good person. He’s been involved in track and field for God knows how long, and he’s done a lot for the sport. He deserves it.”