Posted on: Monday, September 6, 2004

ABOUT MEN
On track of dreams, it's a gold

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Mercifully, the Olympic Games are over, and with them, the oldest athletic fantasy this man has ever nurtured.

The Games torture me. I love them and hate them. Every four years they remind me of the worst of my sins.

Athletic envy.

Surely, other men feel this way and I pity them. In our mind's eye, we are always the victor, outstriding champions until the light changes at an intersection and someone behind us honks their horn.

Watching the Olympics, it all comes back to me. Before they're over, the genie is out of the bottle, whispering in my ear, defying maturity and whatever passes for wisdom.

I should know better.

For much of my youth — and especially when I was a skinny, pimple-faced high school student — I dreamed of running fast.

And when you are young, you place a dream like that on the world's greatest athletic stage. The Olympics. It seems ridiculous now.

I thought about running in all its forms, memorizing records and reading old stories about Olympic champions. One year I taped a Sports Illustrated photo of my favorite sprinter to a Pee-Chee folder.

Those were the days, right? Isn't that what people say when they lament faded youth? Flog them and all their kind.

In truth, those days were mostly awful. I chased the young gods of my team, dying to breathe the same air. But they had no time for me. I was unworthy. I was last.

For me, each track season began with optimism and ended with the hope that somehow it would be better the next year. It never was.

The disciplines are varied in track, but our team had a common denominator: The 440-yard dash. One lap run as fast as possible. Usually, you felt sick when it was over.

This was my race and it gave me no gold medals. But to this day I still have a faded, blue ribbon that I have kept in a drawer since 1975. It is bittersweet memorabilia.

In the 440 — we called it the quarter — my high school teammates ran with wings on their shoes. Until one April night at a district championship, I never understood what that was like.

That trip around the oval is seared into my memory.

The scratch of spikes down the backstretch. The pounding of my heart going into the final turn. The teammate at the finish, the only friend who ever said: I knew you could.

Afterward, I sat in the stands, temporarily transformed by my first victory. I was so happily oblivious to everything that I missed the call to the awards podium.

When that night was over, the wings that carried me across the track left my feet forever. I never won a second race.

So farewell to the Olympics. Farewell to envy. The stoplight has changed to green — the color of hope, right? — and the fantasy must end. For now.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.