Serafin twisted his mouth into something like a smile. “So you want more time with her?”
“More?” repeated Dryden.
“Come, come,” said Serafin. “Do you reckon I have forgotten the five hours you spent with her in San Diego? Are you actually asking me to believe you need to be reminded of the shape of her hands? Let’s be candid, Mr. Dryden. You’re a resourceful man, or I wouldn’t have hired you. You submitted her to a very thorough interrogation in San Diego. By the end of it, there wasn’t much you didn’t know about me or Goldengirl. And now there are two more points you need to check with her: one is that I actually carried out that physical this afternoon, and the other — unless you have it already from another source — is the location of the new training camp. To save you the trouble, I’ll tell you now that it’s Thomas Jefferson College on the shores of Lake Erie, a mile or so west of Cleveland. The director happens to be an old friend from my postgraduate days at Yale.”
“I thought you weren’t telling anyone that.”
“You’d have found out,” said Serafin simply. “You would need to know, anyway. There are sure to be things we must discuss in the next four weeks. You and I are the principals in this enterprise now. Without disrespect to the others, they don’t need the information. They could be a nuisance, pestering me for progress reports. I don’t mean to be unsocial, but there’s a lot to do. If you still want a meeting with Goldine, I suggest you don’t make it too late. My guess is that She’ll be pretty exhausted by this evening.”
“Don’t kid yourself this is leading up to anything,” Goldine said as she flopped on the bed. “It’s just so much sitting. Bliss to stretch my legs.”
*
“Your training is all wrong,” commented Dryden, smiling. “I get a lot of practice sitting. I could win medals at that. Would you say I have an elegant style?” He posed stiff-backed, with arms folded.
“Championship class,” she said in an effort to sound amused.
The room overlooked a shadowy square of lawn. One corner of the quadrangle glowed vivid orange in the sun.
“How did it go?”
“The interviews? Great,” she said with more animation. “Maybe I shouldn’t say that till I see what they write, but I had a ball.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I have been trained to talk about myself,” she went on. “This was for real, with people I never met before in my life, people who want to know about me. Jack, I wallowed in it. I gave some cute answers, too.”
He nodded, but with slight unease. “I’m sure you did. No problems, then?”
“My throat’s a little sore. Doc figures I have a virus infection.”
“He told me.”
“Myself, I think it’s the talking,” said Goldine. “The press conference last night, and then all the interviews today.”
“You don’t feel unwell, then?”
“Thirsty, that’s all,” said Goldine. “I must have drunk a gallon of water.” She giggled. “I kept stopping to visit the john. I hope they don’t put that in the magazines. But I still feel thirsty, so I guess Doc is right. He gave me something to help my throat. Say, I had a visit from one of the U.S. team managers. A real nice woman.”
“What was that about?”
“They wanted me to get some altitude training at Colorado Springs.” She gave another quick laugh. “I had to confess I’ve done a little already. I told her Doc has arranged for me to have the use of a track where I can train in seclusion, and she seemed to think that was okay. So long as I report for the U.S. team briefing and medical on July thirtieth, they’ll let me alone. Doc already sent them a letter saying I wasn’t available for the relay teams. Some committee is considering that. I don’t see how they can object. I mean, I know it’s traditional for the girls in individual events to make up the relay teams, but nobody has ever tried three events before, if I ran the relays, that would make seventeen races in eight days. Somebody must see that’s ridiculous.”
“They might suggest you drop out of one of the individual events instead.”
“The four hundred, I suppose. They could suggest it, but I wouldn’t back down for anything. I mean, I had to fight for that place, all the way up that home stretch. Okay, maybe I only got third because I have a better chest measurement than Janie Canute, maybe Janie was shook up from her fall, but the fact is that the photo showed me ahead of her.”
Some of this was news to Dryden. “She had a fall, you say?”
“I heard some talk of it,” said Goldine vaguely. “She stumbled on the hostel steps, I understand.”
“Tough,” said Dryden. “So that was why she couldn’t go faster in the Final.” Before he got the words out, he was cursing himself for being so tactless. His voice trailed away in embarrassment.
Goldine propped herself on her elbows, eyes burning. “Tough for her? How do you think I felt, getting beat by two girls I could have run off their feet if I hadn’t caught this bug? I know people are saying I tried too many events, I should stand down and give Canute a run in Moscow, but, hell, she can run in the relay team. I’m not giving up my place to anyone.” The bedsprings rattled as she thrust her head back on the pillow.
“Why should you, indeed?” said Dryden quickly. “After all the training you put in. It sounds to me as if Canute was looking for an alibi.”
He expected her to latch on to this, but she spurned it.
“What the hell — it’s all history. The fact is that I took third place. I’m thinking of Moscow now, what I have to do there. You have to be single-minded if you aim to excel in sports.”
“Or anything else,” said Dryden.
“This has been good for me,” she continued. “Out on that track, I was coming to terms with myself. There was a moment in that four hundred when I realized the first two girls had got away, and I was fighting for the last place on the team. I was in desperate trouble, but I had a fantastic sensation of power. Not in my legs; they were dragging. In my head. For the first time in my life, I controlled my own destiny. And other people’s. There was nothing Doc, Pete, Sammy or anyone but me with my two stupid tired legs could do to get that place. If I chose, I could ease up a little and settle for fourth and they would have to watch helpless while all their plans, all that cash, fizzled in front of their eyes. There’s no money at all to speak of in an Olympic double. It’s been done so many times. The triple is the only one that counts. So there I was with this marvelous feeling of self-determination. It was as good as adrenalin. And when I got it, I knew I wanted more, so I had to get that third place.”
“Just for yourself,” said Dryden.
“You bet. It’s something I’d never experienced, never even thought about before, carrying people’s hopes. Jack, I like it. I like the feeling that I could get to the Finals in Moscow with the whole of America watching me and if I chose, I could win, but just as easily I could” — she paused, considering, then laughed — “I could stop running and pee on the track to show how much I care about gold medals.”
“What an idea!” said Dryden, trying to treat it casually. “Look, you’re undermining my confidence.”
“That’s why I’m saying it. Nobody can take Goldengirl for granted any more. She’s not an automaton. She’s an independent human spirit. You think I’m feverish? I’ll tell you another thing. Coming up the home stretch I knew I could beat Janie Canute. I can take anyone on a dip finish. All I had to do was stay close up. She’s a Jesus Freak — I suppose you know. Real charitable. I talked to her earlier in the week. You wouldn’t meet a more generous-hearted girl. Really, there’s nothing to dislike in her unless you have a hangup about religious people. But in that final hundred meters of the race I felt quite savage toward her. A cat-and-mouse thing, letting her steal a few inches ahead, knowing all the time I was dominant. When you run shoulder to shoulder with someone there’s a special kind of intimacy between you. And if you’re the one with the whip hand, hmm, that’s fabulous. Ugly, maybe, but an experie
nce I savored. Relished, even. Now you know the kind of person I am. I’m discovering myself as I go on with this.”
“You’re sure it is yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
He chose his words judiciously. “You seem to be suggesting that this experience revealed your true nature. I’m not sure that this is so. It could be the first chance you’ve had to release some inner tensions.”
Scornfully, she snapped back, “Don’t talk like Sammy. It doesn’t carry conviction. Are you telling me I’m basically a sweet little girl, not mean at all?”
He answered with a generalization. “In top-class sports it’s unusual to be friendly with your rivals. You can make a show of it, shake hands with them before the race, but inside you’re hoping they drop dead on the track.”
“I know. The killer instinct,” she said in a bored voice. “Now tell me that’s just something you put on, like track shoes.”
Dryden shook his head. “I know plenty of sports stars, remember. As personalities, they differ a lot. They have one thing in common: when they’re down to the wire, they are ruthless, Goldine, ruthless. It takes an experience like the one you had yesterday to discover that.”
She laughed. “You’re a smart talker, Jack. What am I supposed to do — shout Eureka, I have the essential quality of a champion? You don’t have to preach to me. I’ve had a bellyful of therapy. I’m on another trip now. Self-discovery. I’ll let you know how it works out.”
Chapter 17
Pan Am Flight 164 was three hours into its five-and-a-half-hour schedule between Los Angeles and New York. From his pile of papers in the First Class bay of the Boeing 747, Dryden picked up a copy of Sportscene that had caught his eye on the bookstand at L.A. International Airport. It was dated August 1. Instead of the usual baseball player, the cover photo featured the shapelier back view of a girl athlete, her face turned to glance over her shoulder, a bright-eyed, confident look, framed in soft brown hair. She was in the blue-and-white strip-costume of East Germany. The picture was artfully cut off at the thighs to focus attention on the tightly stretched white shorts. The creases on view were not in the fabric. The caption read: URSULA KRÜLL: “MOSCOW IS MINE.”
He turned to the cover story.
In a classroom in a Luckenwalde junior school, thirty miles south of Berlin, sit 34 eleven-year-olds, straight-backed, arms folded, girls with hair ribbons, boys in white shirts. One place is empty: the center column, second from front. “Nobody sits there until after the Spartakiad,” explains head teacher Heinz Krämer. “That place is reserved for the outstanding athlete of the class. It is the place Ursula Krüll once occupied. I taught her myself,” he proudly adds, his thoughts darting back to 1969.
Ursula is currently the fastest girl runner in the world. When she was no bigger than Herr Krämer’s pupils, she competed in the Spartakiad, a festival of sports at regional and national level involving over four million children. She was a slimly built child with two red hair ribbons. Those ribbons got to be a familiar sight as she raced to easy victories over all other girls of her age group.
East Germany spends five per cent of its national income on sports development. The State Secretariat for Physical Culture and Sport draws together athletic activities in schools, factories, co-operatives and recreation zones into a cohesive program, ensuring that talents like Ursula’s are fostered from childhood through maturity. She was sent to one of the twenty sports schools for children of precocious physical ability. At twelve, she was already listed as a potential competitor for the Olympic Games. At seventeen, she won her first national title, over 100 meters, and at eighteen, in 1976, she competed in the Montreal Olympics. She qualified for the Final, but was not among the medal-winners. “It was the experience I went for,” she explains. “Montreal was never intended as my Games. I’ve been working to a ten-year program since I was twelve. Montreal was for other girls. Moscow … Moscow is mine.”
At twenty-two, Ursula is ready for Moscow. Her teasing gray-blue eyes, cutely bobbed brown hair and svelte figure may not accord with stereotypes of Eastern-bloc athletes, but her progress places her emphatically in the tradition of East Germany’s former sprint queen, the powerful Renate Stecher. Over the last three years, Ursula has headed the world rankings for the 100- and 200-meter dash events. In 1978, she zipped to a convincing double in the European Cup Final. Since then she has not lost a race. And she has got faster each year. Going into 1980, she looked the undisputed claimant for Olympic gold.
Now, just weeks from the Games, has emerged a threat to Ursula’s ten-year plan. It happened in the most unlikely way. Last winter, while Ursula was grinding out her four-hour schedule of sprint training and weightlifting in one of Berlin’s newest indoor sportsdromes, a retired California professor was urging his daughter to take up some physical activity. “It’s not good for an eighteen-year-old to spend all her time around the house,” Bill Serafin told blond Goldine. “You should try getting some exercise. Like jogging.”
To please her pa, Goldine put on some sneakers and took a turn around the Bakersfield block where they live. She didn’t easily identify as one of the Jogging Generation, so her progress was brisker than gurus of the jog would recommend for a maiden run. She stretched her legs and went. And she enjoyed it. “This could be fun,” she told her father when she got home. “But I’d like to run on a track, not around the block.”
Next afternoon, Goldine made a circuit of the Bakersfield College Stadium. And another. At the end of the week she tried a 100-meter dash. Someone nearby was holding a stopwatch. “Get a coach for that kid, and she could run the Olympics,” he told Prof Serafin.
So they did. They hired Pete Klugman, former coach to the U.S. Olympic squad. “Soon as I saw Goldine, I knew she was a natural,” says Klugman. “She had everything: stride length, style and basic speed. All I had to teach her was technique.”
He had seven months for that. In East Germany, Goldine’s gift for running would have been spotted in junior school, shaped and honed to perfection over years. Track in America is a more haphazard affair. Prompted by Klugman, Goldine decided to go for broke on the Olympics, training in secret, with the U.S. Trials in July as a deadline. She had just one competitive outing before that, at a San Diego club meet. She won the 100, 200 and 400 meters in top-class times. Experts who had never heard of Goldine Serafin queried the timekeeping.
At the Trials in Eugene last month, the Bakersfield blonde posted her challenge to Ursula Krüll, setting new U.S. records in Ursula’s pet events, the 100 and 200 meters. For the hell of it, she also entered and qualified for the Olympic team in the 400 meters, finishing third. No U.S. girl has ever run all three sprint events at one Games.
Tall, elegant-featured Goldine, with sparkling blue eyes, pink cheeks and a sharp turn of conversation, is dismissive of her Eugene performances. “It’s Moscow that counts,” she says, sighing. “I’m very inexperienced. I’ll run the best I can for America, but don’t overdo the buildup, will you? I’d rather surprise people than disappoint them.” But she is losing no sleep over the clash with Ursula Krüll. “I haven’t had time to study other girls’ form. Krüll is just a name to me. It might as well be Schmidt, or anything else. Somebody has to be top girl in East Germany. It’s a system I’m running against more than any one girl.”
The system is geared to producing champions. Unlike the Russians, whose performances in track have shown a marked decline since the Soviet republics gained more autonomy in sports development, the East Germans bring their superstars together for intensive training and competition. At the Leipzig College of Physical Education, where Ursula Krüll graduated from school, the pick of German athletes train under the guidance of professional coaches to a program based on extensive scientific research into physiological development. There are strong incentives to excel: for students, larger cash grants for better performances, and for coaches, extensions of their contracts if their charges win championships. “I have kept the same coaches for a l
ong time,” says Ursula.
If Goldine Serafin has a system, it is based strictly on free enterprise. Women’s track is a backwater in the U.S.A. Few girls persist with any kind of sport after leaving high school. Diver Micki King, who took the gold medal for springboard in the Munich Olympics, put it like this: “We’re mystery people. We have our place in the sun once every four years, and then we disappear.”
For her place in the sun, Goldine is presently training up to four hours a day to coach Klugman’s schedule. What is her incentive? “It’s the joy of running,” she explains. “If I’d been made to do it since I was a kid in kindergarten, I think the fun might have gone out of it by now. Put me down as a souped-up jogger. That’s all I am.”
Sportswriters in Olympic year can be forgiven for seeing it differently. U.S. women’s sprinting has been dominated by black girls — Wilma Rudolph and Wyomia Tyus the most brilliant — since the Olympics recommenced after World War II. The last white American of top class was 1936 Olympic champion Helen Stephens. A fast blonde may be a cliché, but she’s rare enough in reality to rate star treatment in 1980. Since her breakthrough in Eugene, Goldine’s story has made the pages of almost every publication except the Harvard Business Review. And her tall, shapely figure (36-24-36) is becoming as familiar as the smiles of the presidential candidates.
While Goldine adapts to the pressures of the media, Ursula in Berlin bears the ballyhoo of Olympic year with the cool of a seasoned campaigner. Since her European Cup triumphs a year ago, she has taken over as East Germany’s most glamorous sportsgirl. Previous incumbents include the beautiful (and since twice-married) blond diver Ingrid Krämer, a triple gold medalist, and attractive gymnast Karen Janz, who robbed Olga Korbut and comrades of two gold medals in the Munich Olympics. Any idea that glamor has no place in a Communist society is given the lie by pinup posters of Ursula, in tracksuit, that share many a German bedroom wall with Marx and Lenin. Her running shorts are cut with a dash that beats all records. “If you have good legs, it does no harm to show them,” she explains in a highly serious tone. “Running is kind to my legs. It keeps them in shape. Skiing and cycle racing aren’t so good. If I was a cyclist, maybe I would wear less revealing shorts.” She still admitted slight irritation at the maneuvers of our cameraman. “Always the back view. What is it about my butt? People say I turn my back on the camera deliberately, but I don’t. I’m conscious of my body, but only important things, like knee lift and leg cadence.”
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