Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
And then there was Wariner. In the semis Saturday, he came flying out of the blocks and cruised to a 44.87, faster than anybody else, and you could just feel a gazillion track fans around the world eyeballing him and saying, "Is that a tan, or what?"
That was just the semis, though. A 20-year-old white kid from Baylor was not going to win gold in an Olympics 400.
But he did.
For a spectator, every distance has its unique joys. The 100 is just pure predation, it shoots you through the heart. The 200 is a delirious double shot of the same. The 800 is almost too painful to watch; the 1,500 is the gold standard, requiring the perfect blend of speed and endurance. The longer distances conjure up invincible images of man tracking down his quarry across the plains, with strides implacable as the movement of the earth.
But the 400, for me, is the most heart-quickening race of them all. Anyone who was in Sydney and watched Cathy Freeman, with her gloriously fluid stride coming around the last turn, and Michael Johnson, with that unique, almost ungainly straight-up stance, his churning legs and mighty chest a force no power in the world could defeat, powering down the back straight to victory, will carry the memory forever. The 400 is a race for cheetahs or leopards, at once explosive and silky smooth, run most of the way at 95 percent. If you aren't stirred as they flash in front of you through that first turn, discipline, talent and beauty united, the embodiment of what the ancient Greeks called arete -- excellence -- you don't like sports.
They settled into the blocks. At 6 feet, 170 pounds, Wariner has a longer, leaner physique than either of his two American teammates, Otis Harris and Derrick Brew. The field exploded away at the gun. Harris, who has a more muscular and powerful style, challenged Wariner for the early lead, but Wariner held position, with the crowd roaring, and on the home straight opened it up and showed why he was the class of the field. Harris pushed him all the way to the wire, but Wariner, whose viciously elegant, ground-devouring stride is so pretty you want to store it away somewhere so you can take it out from time to time and look at it, stayed in his own little Flash world, ignoring the express train a few inches away, and held him off to win in a fast 44.00. He was the eighth-fastest man ever to run the 400. Wariner didn't even seem to be breathing hard as he crossed the line, and his face behind the sunglasses was as blank as Apollo's.
When they announced that America had swept the medals, I let out a major scream, which was greeted with a just-barely-polite silence by the two very large Greek men squeezed in on either side of me and by the passionately flag-waving, Greek-rooting fans who surrounded me in my cheap-seat section in the corner of the stadium. There aren't a lot of American fans here, far fewer than at Sydney, and those who braved Osama's evil minions, totally incorrect rumors of Greek incompetence and the almighty euro to come here, are keeping a very low profile. Screaming loudly because the U.S. had swept the medals in an event, it suddenly occurred to me, could easily be interpreted by Greek fans as a vaunting, Dick Cheney-esque move, the Olympic fan's equivalent of Achilles dragging Hector around the walls of Troy. Oh well, too bad: As the three Americans took their victory lap, I yelled and screamed some more.
I have mixed feelings about the new U.S. restraint. It's true that the Ugly American Fan is tiresome, and it's useful for us Yanks, accustomed to blindly bigfooting the world at the Olympics and everywhere else, to find ourselves outnumbered and none too well regarded. (As is true throughout Europe and even the Middle East, the antipathy for America is for the Bush administration and its foreign policy, not for Americans. The Greeks, although a complex and not effusive people, have been more than friendly and helpful to me.) On the other hand, you've got to cheer for the home team -- why not? I cheer for everybody, especially the Greeks, who several times seem to have been lifted up by the enormous hand of their rapturous countrymen and moved several meters down the track, as happened the night before with unheralded Greek triple-jumper Hrysopiyi Devetzi, who was elevated by the crowd to a silver medal. And the truth is that American fans aren't any more obnoxious than any other fans.
Later, before an almost-deserted stadium, most of the Greek fans long departed, Wariner stood on top of the medal platform. He was blinking now, and with his shades off, he looked utterly confused, overwhelmed and young -- not the ultra-cool, racially ambiguous, wigger dude I imagined him to be. He was just a rangy boy from Texas who grew up running like the wind and had just run his way into history. The joy was left to be expressed by teammate Harris, whose deep, inward-looking smile, crowned by one of those glorious wreaths, was as easy and satisfying as Sunday morning.
It couldn't get much better than that, but then it did. On the big screen in the stadium, who should appear but Michael Johnson, the legend himself, taking a picture of the three young men who had just taken one step toward filling his golden shoes.
