He Can Run but Can’t Hide

Some people can live with secrets. Others can’t.

Jerome Young and Tyree Washington lined up two lanes apart Tuesday night at Stade de France, each intent on becoming the United States’ first 400-meter world champion in the post-Michael Johnson era of track and field.

Each had had secrets. Each had seen tumultuous times no doubt related to those secrets retard their once-promising careers. But now they had arrived back at the same place at the same time, back at the pinnacle.

One no longer had his secret. The other did, if only for a few hours more.

Washington, the favorite, would finish second, but even when that became apparent in the last few strides of the race, I couldn’t help but think he’s going to have a much more relaxed time during the coming days than the winner, Young.

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With Johnson’s last Olympics approaching in Sydney in 2000, Washington and Young were considered leading candidates to succeed him as the United States’ predominant quarter miler. But Washington, who was 26, failed to even make the Olympic team. Young, who was 24, barely made the team as a relay alternate.

As we since have learned, both arrived at the Olympic trials that year under duress.

Washington’s 18-month-old niece had been assaulted and murdered only weeks before by her mother, Washington’s sister, Rosalyn, and her boyfriend at their Riverside home. According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which covered the trial two years later, baby Anjulette had been isolated, starved, beaten and bound, her mouth and eyes taped shut with duct tape.

That occurred at about the same time that Young, according to a report in today’s Times, was receiving what appeared to be good news. After testing positive for a steroid in June 1999, which could have resulted in a two-year suspension, he had won his appeal before a USA Track & Field panel and would be free to compete.

But the case became celebrated in Sydney as international officials accused USATF, track and field’s national governing body, of a cover-up and demanded that the unknown athlete’s name be revealed.

The path of least resistance would have been for the USATF officials to confide in the International Olympic Committee and the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, explain to them the reasons the drug test was overturned and put the case to rest.

Instead, USATF officials have to this day refused to name the athlete, citing his rights to anonymity, and making them all appear as if they have something to hide.

Young must have known for the last three years that his name would surface one day and that he would be asked to explain.

Only he knows how the secrecy has affected his performances, if at all. He didn’t run well in 2001 and ’02.

In the celebration after his world championship Tuesday night, he spoke generally about his difficulties.

“In the last two years, I was way off,” he said. “I had bad injuries and bad situations and stuff that I had occur. Certain stuff wasn’t right.”

I had hoped later to ask him privately if he was referring to the drug controversy. But he was whisked away by officials to doping control.

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Washington, meantime, has been fighting his own personal demons since 2000. It was only a couple of months ago that he buried his shame and revealed to reporters at the national championships his sister’s role in the death of his niece.

“The last thing I remember was hugging my little niece real tight,” said Washington, who was so distraught by her death that he went more than a year before returning to competition last winter. “If that little baby could talk, she would have said, ‘Uncle, take me.’ ”

He said he blamed himself at first.

“I feel I could have done something about it,” he said of the abuse that he and family members believed was occurring but said they couldn’t get authorities to act upon. “But it’s out of my control. I’m not God.”

Then last week, in Paris, Washington revealed that he had testified in a deposition against his sister that aided in convicting her and her boyfriend of assault and first-degree murder. They were sentenced last year to 25 years to life.

“I don’t know if anyone knows what it’s like to put their sister away,” he said. “But what she did was wrong. It’s time for me to grow up.”

Washington unquestionably is a stronger runner now that he has learned to confront the truth, and I’m guessing that he would tell you he is also a better man.

That didn’t help him win Tuesday night. Young was too strong down the final straightaway.

“When I was playing catch-up the last 50 meters, I knew I shouldn’t have been doing that,” Washington said.

Today, when the track and field world is demanding that he stop hiding behind his secret, it is Young who will be playing catch-up to Washington.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com.