The Front Runner (16 page)

I found it more and more unbelievable that spectators and officials could deride those three handsome manly dignified young men. I found it particularly curious that they could deride Billy, when he looked more and more like the only serious threat to European domination in the 5,000 and 10,000 that America had so far had. But the deriders wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted medals hung only on clean-cut heterosexuals.

Thus, a paunchy track nut sitting in the first row, with his well-thumbed program and his cigar, would yell at Billy, "Hey, loverboy, whose girlfriend are you?"

If Billy came in second, some wit would be sure to yell, "Nice gays never win."

Vince and Billy were not disturbed by the remarks. Vince might throw the guy a bird or yell back something smart-ass. Billy simply ignored them. But Jacques shrank from them. "I don't know how long I can take this," he said. His performances that summer really dropped off. He was so nervous that his legs were dead by the time he got to the starting line.

We got to one meet in July and they told us the boys couldn't compete. They were very sorry. They said that our entries hadn't been received before the closing date. They were polite, but firm. They didn't say anything about the boys being gay. They just said they couldn't run.

I had anticipated this kind of trick. I pulled out a signed certified-mail return receipt with the meet secretary's signature on it. I always sent the boys' entries by certified mail now. Since I'd sent them in weeks before, the meet people had forgotten somebody had signed. They had to let the three run.

At another meet, Vince was barred from the track at the last moment. The officials insisted that his new AAU registration was not valid. Vince fumed and cursed, and got out his AAU card. The officials insisted that the matter would have to be looked into, and meantime he couldn't compete. They practically shoved

him off the track. We had the matter investigated immediately, and of course his card was okay.

They picked on Vince a lot because they disliked his impudence. At still another meet they wouldn't let him run until he'd paid an extra fifty cents of entry fee to make up for an official's mistake. Vince was scrounging madly for two quarters at trackside, and barely got to his marks on time.

In late July a more serious matter came up. I wanted to take all three of them to Europe for a month, to get the international experience they needed so badly. We planned to go to a number of big meets, including Helsinki. But when we applied to the AAU for the routine travel permits, the AAU would not give them to us.

It may seem strange that in this day and age of total freedom, when Americans travel freely everywhere, even to Red China, an amateur athlete does not enjoy quite the same freedom of travel. But the matter of who goes on European tours is a big point of politics with the AAU. They reserve the right to arrange for travel, whether or not it is in accord with the athlete's wishes and needs, and they reserve the right to give or deny permission to go. They insist that foreign meet promoters contact them and not the individual athletes that the promoters might like.

Recently athletes have been quarreling bitterly with the AAU over travel, especially in view of AAU abuses. Say a Belgian promoter contacts AAU executive director Mel Steinbock and says, "Could I have miler John Doe in my meet?" and the executive director might reply cavalierly, "Sorry, buddy, the meet schedule here conflicts—we need John Doe." John Doe is furious because (1) the meet schedule doesn't conflict and he would have been free to go, and (2) he feels that he should have been consulted about this important decision.

It reached the point where foreign promoters were as pissed at the AAU as American runners were, and finally the AAU was starting to be more careful.

That summer, the AAU organized a European tour for a number of athletes as part of the Olympic develop-

ment program. Some of the athletes' expenses would be paid by the AAU, some by the European promoters. Naturally, though their status clearly warranted it, Billy, Vince and Jacques were not invited on the tour.

I had known that they wouldn't be. So well in advance I had surreptitiously contacted the European promoters myself, saying we planned to come abroad and asking if they were interested. Quite a few were. Knowing the AAU's strange ways, they kept me surreptitiously informed while they made the formal request to the AAU.

The AAU was panicked and embarrassed at the thought of their three rumored homosexuals touring Europe. But they didn't say the word "homosexual" out loud once. To the promoters they said, "Oh, we're awfully sorry, we want those three boys for the U.S.Soviet invitational in Los Angeles in mid-August."

When the foreign promoters relayed this information to us, we told Steinbock that the boys did not plan to go to Los Angeles, and that they damn well wanted their travel permits. Steinbock got furious and said he wasn't giving them any permits.

Then I got furious and called Steinbock up. "You've got a choice," I said. "You can issue these permits and the whole thing will blow over. Or you can deny them, and we'll go anyway."

"If you do that, I'll suspend all three boys," said Steinbock crisply.

"Then you're going to buy yourself a lot of trouble," I said. "I'll get a court injuction preventing you from punishing them pending a hearing. Do you want a hearing? What's the big deal? They don't plan to run at the Soviet meet, so why not let them go? What have you got against them?"

We packed our bags, and John Sive prepared to get the injunction. But at the last minute, following file AAU's new policy of caution, Steinbock backed down and issued the permits.

Billy Sive arrived in Europe unknown to track fans there. But he wasn't an unknown long. In Helsinki,

right on schedule, he broke twenty-eight in the 10,000 meter, which was already then—and would be—his best race. By doing so he joined the select club of fifteen world-class runners who had run under twenty-eight in this event, and was now in fifth place on the world list. But he had a long way to go before he could beat the world-record holders like Lasse Viren and Armas Sepponan, who held the current record of 27:36.11 in the 10,000.

Sepponan, in fact, was sure to be Billy's biggest worry in Montreal—if he got to Montreal at all. Sepponan had a crushing kick, and blew the front-runners right off the track. Two other big kickers were in that Helsinki race—Australia's Jim Felts and Spain's Roberto Gil—and both of them had run well under 28. So, that day in Helsinki, I wasn't really thinking of Billy winning.

Still, I was nervous as I watched the men line up at the start. The big stadium hushed a little. The Europeans really idolize distance runners, in a way that Americans are only now learning to. For them, this was a moment.

The gun fired and they rolled off the line.

The pace dragged a little. Nobody wanted to lead. The kickers were noodling in the rear. Sepponan was running easily in last place. Billy, unusual for him, was running in third place. He told me later that he had felt suddenly intimidated by the thought of all those big guns behind him. Then he thought, What the heck, what was he worried about, and he was worried somebody would elbow him.

So he moved to the front, and picked up the pace sharply. I was relieved to see him do that. The rest had their choice: hang back or go with him. So they all picked up, and three others stayed close to the front with him.

Billy was running easily, beautifully, his shaggy curls lifting, his glasses glinting as the sun caught them. He might have been a perfect machine, except that he was so real, flesh and blood turned to an ultrasonic pitch of rhythm and control. His spiked shoes seemed scarcely  to  strike  the  track.   He  kept  pulling  the

other front-runners farther ahead, sticking to the pace he'd struck.

With a half-mile left to go, Billy suddenly picked up the "pace sharply again. This was his long drive, running flat out to the finish, the tactic that was supposed to burn off the kickers. The other front-runners immediately lost contact with him, and he sped on alone. The crowd started to scream, because now Sepponan, Felts and Gil were moving up fast, hauling Billy down.

With one lap to go, Sepponan and Felts were coming up for the kill. The crowd was screaming. They were mostly Finns, so they wanted to see Sepponan kill off the presumptuous young American that nobody had heard of.

Billy didn't turn his head to look, but he heard them coming. And then I saw a glimpse of what he was capable of. He accelerated too, ghosting along with those great soft strides, his face impassive.

The crowd was going wild. As the four men rounded the last turn, we all knew that three, possibly four of them would go under 28. They had left the pack laboring far behind. They tore out of the turn in a tight little bunch, Billy still ahead, Sepponan at his shoulder, Felts and Gil behind.

I knew in my heart that he didn't have the stamina yet to hold them off.

Almost at the moment I thought it, Billy seemed to falter a little. Sepponan burst past him. The four were sprinting down the straight to the tape. In a last heartbreaking effort, Billy stayed even with Felts until just ten yards from the tape. Then he cracked. He had nothing left. He crossed the line staggering in third place, just barely shading out Gil.

The Finns were going wild, and Armas Sepponan was taking a victory lap. Nobody paid much attention to Billy as he circled shakily back.

I went out to him. He bent over, his hair hanging, his hands braced on his knees. Then, as always when he'd really extended himself, his streaming sides contracted with the dry heaves. I threw a towel over his shoulders, wiped his face with a wet rag. Then I showed

him my stopwatch. He smiled faintly, nodded—he'd already known—but didn't speak.

The times were already going up in lights on the big scoreboard. SEPPONAN 27:47. FELTS 27:49.05. SIVE 27:50.2. GIL 27:50.7.

The two other American runners in the race, Bob Dellinger and Mike Stella, placed ninth and fifteenth with a 28:15 and a 28:25.3. They had the AAU's blessing.

Sepponan finished his victory lap, came up to Billy and put his hand on Billy's shoulders. Billy, recovered now, palmed him back.

Sepponan was a plain skinny man of 27 with close-cut blond hair and high Asiatic cheekbones. "You make me work very hard," he said in accented English.

"Yeah, you made me work hard too," said Billy.

That night, Billy, Sepponan, Felts and a few other European runners sat down together, and talked. They all had beers. Billy had milk. They managed to talk, in their limited common languages, of running, and laughed a lot. Sepponan was straight as a yardstick, but his friendship and respect for Billy endured all the uproar that came later. "He has
sisu,"
he said bluntly, using the Finnish word for guts and pride.

John Sive and I let the runners have their fun, and we went off somewhere else to sit and talk.

"You know," I said, "I think when Billy gets another year under his belt, he's going to be giving us some surprises. I think there's a reservoir of strength and speed that we're just now beginning to tap."

John was so proud of Billy's run that he got pretty drunk that night.

Those three weeks in Europe were the only length of time that Billy and I were able to spend together during the whole 1975-76 school year.

Of course, with Vince and Jacques along, we weren't precisely on a honeymoon for two. But at least we could be natural with each other in front of them. Little by little, I was getting over my fear of showing my feelings for Billy in front of other people.

Much was rumored about that trip. The gossips

talked about little orgies for four. I am sorry to disappoint them, but it was a pretty innocent and proper affair.

The Europeans hadn't heard the rumors yet. Or else they were that much more broadminded. Or perhaps it was just because we couldn't understand any of what spectators shouted from the stands. But we didn't hear the word "fairy" once while we were over there. Jacques was delighted by this, and his performance improved in direct ratio to the absence of hassles.

The four of us traveled on the cheap, lost among the mass of young Americans who invade Europe in the summer.

We had come over on a charter flight. The boys' student ID cards got them a further fare reduction. We carried nothing but one suitcase each, with our athletic gear and one or two changes of good clothes. In front of the American Express in Helinski, we bought a third-hand Renault for $250, and drove from meet to meet.

From Helsinki we went to a meet in Oslo, and saw some of Finland and Norway in the process. Then we took a ferry across to the Continent, the salt breeze blowing in our faces. Then we were driving again, through Germany, Belgium and France. The Europeans, who subsidize amateur athletes, kept asking us how the U.S. could allow athletes of the three boys' caliber to go on a European tour under such humble conditions. We were really pinching pennies. But we didn't mind —we had a wonderful time.

For the first time, I was as much a friend as a coach to, Vince and Jacques. Finally I let them call me Harlan. How can you make a guy call you Mr. Brown after you borrow his tube of Tinactin to put on your case of jock itch?

We lived a warm footloose life. I had never felt so young and at ease—I was recapturing something of that summer with Chris. I don't think I was trying to lower myself to their age bracket on a false basis. It was just that my anxieties about getting old were finally falling away.

At any rate, my fortieth birthday fell during that trip, and I observed it without any heartbreak.

We celebrated it sitting in the sun by a canal in Bruges; eating some crusty bread and cheese. The boys gave me goofy presents. Jacques gave me a bottle of cheap wine. Vince gave me one of those weird European supporters with buttons (they don't have jock straps over there). Billy presented me with a little American flag, which I sewed on my knapsack.

Vince and Jacques drank a little of the wine, and then we poured the rest ceremoniously out as an offering to the earth.