The Perfect Distance

by Pat Butcher

  Many people expected Los Angeles to be a disaster. The Soviet Union and East Germany, the two strongest athletics nations apart from the USA, had boycotted the Olympic Games, in a riposte to the US boycott of Moscow. The infamous LA smog was widely feared by the runners, and the overcrowded highways were felt to pose a threat to stadium access and generally contribute to a hectically crowded Olympics. But the Angelinos, who didn’t like the idea of the Olympics on their doorstep, left town in hordes, cutting down traffic and pollution to manageable levels. And the Games turned out to be a wonderful occasion for most people, from the moment the Rocket Man touched down in front of the main grandstand of the tarted-up Coliseum at the opening ceremony, and the eighty-four gleaming grand pianos slid out of the wings; to the last flag-waving hurrah at the closing ceremony with Lionel Ritchie’s twenty-five-minute version of ‘All Night Long’, which would pop into my head unbidden all year long.

  After his successful rehearsal at the World Championships the previous year, Carl Lewis was primed for his four-gold emulation of Jesse Owens. He won the medals but failed to win over either the crowd in the stadium or the millions watching the starspangled coverage on NBC. Lewis was a real conundrum – immensely talented, strongly competitive, handsome and articulate, but a complete turn-off. Those who had known him as ‘the sweetest kid’, in the words of one West Coast coach, blamed his manager Joe Douglas, a tiny, ebullient Texan. Douglas fostered an image of ‘King Carl’, another L’Equipe construction, and Lewis bought into it big-time. The result was that he was insufferable. His preening and posing alienated virtually everyone, from his rivals and other athletes to media and sponsors. In an autobiography, Inside Track, published half a dozen years later, Lewis comes over as petty, spiteful and mean-minded, quite an accomplishment for a book that was supposed to be an advert for his talents. He should have been an advertisers’ dream, but nobody would touch him. Lewis blamed a bad press, but one US marketing executive I canvassed at the time simply said, ‘Attitude.’

  The ambivalence about his alleged homosexuality may have had a lot to do with it, and he was never clear on the subject. But that was undoubtedly one of the turn-offs in a country whose sporting image, born of the cowboy, is the ultimate macho man. The inimitably tasteless Daley Thompson went to his post-victory press conference in LA wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend, ‘Is the World’s Second-Best Athlete Gay?’ But Thompson made an interesting contrast to Lewis in the arena of public perception. Despite his own nasty streak, to which many can testify, Thompson’s flip attitude made him everybody’s – including the US media’s – surrogate hero, while Lewis’ earnestness earned him only derision. But credit where it’s due, Lewis was one of the greatest competitors I ever saw (then again, so was Thompson). I lost count of the times Lewis would pull out a victory under pressure in the long jump on the Grand Prix circuit throughout the eighties. But at the 1984 Olympics, another great competitor was having problems of a different kind.

  As soon as Ovett arrived in Los Angeles he knew he was in trouble. There might have been less smog than usual, but the aftermath of his bronchitis, his inability to deal with heat, and the residual pollution all conspired to floor him, literally. ‘I remember arriving in LA and almost straight away finding difficulty with breathing, even on a gentle run. I thought I was coming down with a cold, flu or something, which again is a worry when you arrive somewhere, but obviously it was a problem with the smog there. I was suffering from exercise-induced asthma, which is a restriction of the bronchial tube. But no one in Los Angeles wanted to label it as that, because you don’t talk about the smog in Los Angeles at Olympics time. In the past I had one or two problems with asthma, but never as severe as that.’

  Prepared or not, the Games must go on, and four years after what was probably the most eagerly awaited Olympic clash in history, Coe and Ovett again went to the line in the Olympic 800 metres final. This time, they were far from being favourites. Going into the competition, Coe was the year’s third fastest with 1 minute 43.84 seconds, but much would depend on his capacity to do that repeatedly, which he had not shown for almost three years. Earl Jones and Johnny Gray had shared the national record of 1 minute 43.74 seconds in a sensational US Championships race, where John Marshall had edged James Robinson out of the third Olympic spot, despite sharing the time of 1 minute 43.92 seconds! Donato Sabia of Italy had also run under 1 minute 44 seconds, but lurking behind them on 1 minute 44.4 seconds was a tall, gangling figure with curly hair, not unlike Cram, but even bigger – a former basketball player, Joaquím Cruz of Brazil. Ovett was way down the lists, with 1 minute 46.15 seconds.

  Coe breezed through the heats, showing little evidence of his two years of disappointment and indisposition. He won his first round in 1 minute 45.71 seconds, and finished a close second in the next to Billy Konchellah of Kenya (who had paced him in his world record in Florence), in 1 minute 46.71 seconds. Ovett finished second to Cruz in both rounds, in 1 minute 46.66 seconds and what looked like a promising 1 minute 45.72 seconds. But off the track he was in trouble. ‘I just found I could not breathe and I was suffocating. I thought, I’d better get off the track, I am sure I’m going to pass out here. I remember just getting into the tunnel, sitting down, and then I passed out. And the next thing I knew, I came to, and Harry [Wilson] was standing there.

  ‘I came to again in the hospital and I said, “What am I doing here?” He said, “I came to get you, you were about half an hour in that tunnel and no one knew where you were. And when I found you, you were just lying there.” I think there were probably quite a few athletes lying around, but I was actually out. When I got to the hospital, they were saying, “You are OK, but we are going to have to look and take some readings from you.” There was just disbelief that I was actually going through this sort of scenario. I mean, one minute you are super fit and you arrive in the city, and the next minute you are in the hospital. It didn’t really sink in, I didn’t realise how serious the problem was. They discharged me and I went back to the village, and the next day the same thing happened again.’

  In Moscow, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had been the subtext of much of the reporting back in Britain. There was something much more insidious happening at home during Los Angeles – the Miners’ Strike, and the commando tactics used by the Thatcher government to quash it. But such was the celebrity of the Olympic trio that the strike was knocked off the top of the television news agenda, to accommodate reports of Ovett’s problems. It was obvious to everyone by now: every time Ovett went onto the track he looked dreadful. He had been floored in the tunnel after the second round, but he would floor himself in the semi-final in a desperate, successful, effort – which said much for his tenacity – to reach his third successive Olympic 800 metres final. Ovett was in Cruz’s race yet again. And the Brazilian ran from the front with the same abandon he had demonstrated in the heats. Cruz had an untroubled win in an ominous 1 minute 43.82 seconds. Ovett seemed out of contention until the final strides, when he literally launched himself at the line in an effort to make the top four, and the final. He succeeded, by six hundredths of a second, but he was clearly in distress.

  Coe, in contrast, stamped his authority on the second semi-final, winning in 1 minute 45.51 seconds. He had done everything right in all three races so far. There was a confidence about him, which came out in press briefings. Even socially he seemed different. He had finally become his own man. Only one athlete stood between him and his dream of a major 800 metres title – Joaquím Cruz. The tall, powerful Brazilian had taken over from Ovett, who was a shadow of his former self. The British team management was at the latter’s hospital bedside, trying to persuade him not to run in the final.

  ‘Harry was very cautious this time,’ Ovett recalls. ‘He was waiting for me and he got the doctors to me. I remember sitting in bed. I think it was Lynn Davies or Nick Whitehead came, and as I came to, they said, “Don’t go on any more. You are being silly, don’t go and push yourself,” and this, that a
nd the other. And I said, “Well, I have made the final.” In my mind this thing came on so quickly, I had a funny feeling that it was going to go as quickly. Because it literally came on as I raced, or as I ran, and I thought it might go, I might run through it. I ran in the final, [but] it was a pathetic effort really. And I ended up again back in the hospital.’

  Coe did everything right in the final too, but he came up against a force majeure in Cruz. The Brazilian altered his tactics and followed Edwin Koech of Kenya, a noted front-runner. When Cruz kicked off the final bend, there was nothing Coe could do. Cruz had run each round faster than the previous, and he won in 1 minute 43 seconds dead. Coe was an equally clear second, in 1 minute 43.64 seconds. Earl Jones was third. Ovett trailed in a disconsolate last, in 1 minute 52.28 seconds, and sank to his knees. Coe looked massively disappointed, but he had no reason to be. In contrast to Moscow, this was an Olympic silver medal hard earned and well deserved. He collected himself sufficiently to say afterwards, ‘I’m half-delighted that I came back to win the silver, but half-disappointed because I know now that I will never win a major 800 metres championship.’ He would turn out to be wrong about that. But there was something far more important to occupy him at that point – a successful defence of his 1500 metres title, something that had never been done before.

  Prior to that, though, he had no small part to play in Ovett’s drama. Ironically, immediately after the 800 metres, he would spend more time with Ovett than he had in the preceding dozen years. ‘I hadn’t realised at the end of the 800 what trouble he was in. I walked by and put my hand on his shoulder, because he’s on all fours and I just laughed and said, “I think we are a bit too old to be playing with fire.” And I then suddenly realised he wasn’t even responding; he had gone white. They put him on a stretcher and then he started to lose colour. I yelled at the paramedic guys to get over because he just looked, frankly, like he was on his way out. So I hung around there in the tunnel with him for some time. I don’t think he remembers much about what was going on. Rachel was in a state; Andy [Norman] looked quite shocked by it. When they took him off, I could not conceive that he was going to come back for the 1500.’

  But he did, and amazingly won his 1500 metres heat three days later on 9 August, albeit in a pedestrian time of 3 minutes 49.23 seconds. But he was going to end up in hospital after each race. By this time, Rachel Ovett was frantic. ‘I was pretty scared at that point,’ she recalls, ‘bearing in mind Dad’s history [Mick Ovett’s heart-attack]. Steve did have the symptoms of something far more serious. Steve had this steely determination, and no matter what, he was there, and he was going to do it. I can remember him saying he may not run the final, then Harry said, “Well, tomorrow, when you start . . .” And I said, “But he is not going to run tomorrow, is he, Harry?” Harry said, “Well, yes.” I started crying and said I didn’t want him to. Harry said, “Rachel, you can’t say that,” and at that point I realised, no, I actually couldn’t. It seriously was wrong of me even to say it. I shouldn’t have said it. If Steve wanted to do it, it was up to him. That was their decision. There we were, at the Olympics, with a coach and an athlete. No matter what I felt on a personal level, that wasn’t going to change the job that they had to do.’

  For a distraught wife, concerned for the health of her husband, this was an extraordinary recognition of the power of his ambition. She thought his life was in danger. And his life was in danger, because running was his life. This is what he did. This is what he was. He had to do it. He made the caveat that if he felt really bad, he would drop out of the final. Which is what happened. It was a desolate end to an Olympic career.

  Ovett recalls, ‘It was disappointing. I was coming towards the end of my career and I was in great shape. I trained very hard. I am not just saying that: Harry, if he had been alive, would have shown you facts and figures . . . You know, I was probably in as good a shape as I have been in. When I got back to the British Olympic Medical Centre in London, they told me, your bronchii were restricting, your tubes. You were getting sixty per cent and you should have been getting a hundred per cent efficiency. I knew I was in trouble when I went through the bell and it was getting worse. I thought, No, you are going to have to stop. And it was the hardest decision of my life, I had never done that before. And that was it. That was the end of the Olympics for me.’ Operating at 60 per cent of his capacity, Ovett had reached two Olympic finals.

  Cram, too, was not 100 per cent. But you wouldn’t know it. While Coe had almost given his father a heart-attack by throttling back too much when he saw he had qualified, and getting only the fourth of five automatic qualifying places in his 1500 metres semi-final, and Ovett was sensibly doing just enough to finish third in the other semi, up ahead of him Cram was winning. That was either a statement of intent or bravado intended to mask his lack of preparation.

  There had been much trepidation about Cruz, following his dominating victory in the 800 metres, but the tall Brazilian just didn’t have the same experience at 1500 metres, nor the background to accommodate seven fierce races in just over a week. After getting through his heat easily enough, he failed to show up for the semi-final. But Coe was operating on a different level now anyway. He felt good; he knew how well he was running; he didn’t have to prove anything. He was going to do that in the final. ‘I knew I was going to win on the day of the final,’ he says. ‘I knew I was going to win. The biggest issue was not before the race, it was two laps into it. If I had any niggling doubt at all, it was, at what point does the indicator light go yellow, and the engine start to splutter? This was my seventh race in nine days. So they had the advantage of coming there fresh. When I was on my seventh, they were only on their third. But were the problems of the last two years going to catch up with me spectacularly? If I had a slight off day, it was the semi the day before, [when] I eased off marginally too much, and allowed it to be a little too close in qualifying.

  ‘I went in with one strategy and that was, there was no way that with six hundred metres to go was I going to let Crammy get in front of me, because by that stage of his career, he was at his best when he was making an uncluttered, unfettered run for home. He grew in confidence. Get him out in front and he was a difficult athlete to beat. He didn’t have electric acceleration [like Ovett], but when he started to move, God, he really did! And he liked hitting the front. I sensed that he was an athlete that enjoyed taking it on from a distance.’

  For those who remember Coe’s grimace at the press box immediately after the finish line, I asked if revenge was a sufficient motivation. It was the one question out of the dozens I asked in our various interviews which Coe answered without reflection: ‘Yes. Absolutely!’ Eamonn Coghlan, who also felt that he’d had problems with the media, said the same thing, and just as quickly. Competition does not manifest itself simply on the track. Coe expanded: ‘It’s not just external, it’s internal. It’s the annoyance of missed training opportunities, it was the annoyance at having gone so long without diagnosis. It was just everything. It was articles in the newspapers, unfair comments about Peter, and my mum, even. All that sort of thing. Yes, absolutely!’

  Steve Scott felt the onus more than anyone in the Olympic 1500 metres final in Los Angeles. Although he was from San Diego, over a hundred miles south, that was ‘local’ in US and Californian terms. He was the local boy, the home-town hero. Two decades later, Scott gave me a run-down of how he had foreseen the race. ‘I was considered one of the favourites going into the Olympics. Unfortunately, I bought into it too. In 1983 I spent all year over in Europe. I would race and just have a fun time and a great attitude. Then, when the Olympics came along, it was like, Oh, I can’t do that. Instead, I stayed here. I was so caught up in what was happening, reading the LA Times and seeing thirty-three days to go, thirty-two days to go to the Olympics. I just got caught up in the fact that, yes, I need to win for America, instead of just going and racing. I didn’t stay in the village, I didn’t go to any other races, didn’t enjoy the experi
ence. My memory of the Olympics is my heat, my semi, my final and the closing ceremonies. That is all I remember, and I barely remember that.

  ‘I wasn’t comfortable with the race plan, either, taking over that early. But I was committed to it, this was something we had decided a long time ago. I’ve taken the initiative before, but it was never planned; that was just not the way that I raced, I was very much a “feel” runner. The field was wide open, no one had really stood out. Coe did more so than anybody else, by how he ran the 800. I knew that Ovett wasn’t going to be a factor, going through what he went through. I had respect for Cram, but he had had some injury problems and breaks in his training, so it was wide open in my mind, which created more anxiety, because then it was like, OK, now I can win this. Me and my coach’s plan was to run 3.32, and if anybody can beat me, then great! So the winning time was 3.32, but unfortunately everybody beat me!’