I already knew many of these athletes before I interviewed them, and in some cases, as with Seb Coe and Cathy Freeman, they have been long-time friends of mine and we have talked about everything but our Olympic success. So it was truly an enlightening experience for me to talk with these great champions and compare notes not only about our individual Olympic journeys but about what we believe is required for ourselves or anyone else to be successful at the Olympic level. A lot of what I believed already was confirmed from talking with these champions, but I also learned about different approaches from my own that proved successful.
I have always believed that I could put together a pretty good manual for Olympic success. But after talking with so many different Olympic champions who had to overcome multiple different obstacles and challenges en route to their Olympic success, I gained new insight into the mental and physical dedication required to get there.
So as the anticipation of the 2012 Olympic Games rises to fever pitch, let’s look at just what it takes to build an Olympic champion.
1.
MY QUEST FOR GOLD
The Olympic Games are the ultimate in most sports. It’s certainly the pinnacle of a track and field career. And it was the one prize I hadn’t captured. I didn’t want my career to be summarised as: Greatest runner in the 200 and 400 metres ever, but never won an Olympic gold medal.
I couldn’t relax until I had won Olympic gold. But that’s a lot easier said than done. I know from experience how you can be totally ready, go into the Olympics undefeated and clearly the best in the field, and still not win. I had gone from being unranked in the world of track and field, which meant that I was not one of the ten best in the world in my events, to being number one in both the 200-and 400-metre sprints. I’d beaten all the best people in the world in both and had gone undefeated that season. That was an accomplishment that had never been done before, and it garnered me the Men’s Track & Field Athlete of the Year award for 1990. You can’t do better than that.
Two years later, I made the Olympic team. In the four weeks leading up to the Olympics, I prepared for what I knew would be the biggest competition of my life. I focused on the athletes I would be competing against, and worked with my team on how I would need to run the race. Then I prepared to deliver my best.
Not until the opening ceremonies did it really hit me that I was an Olympian. As I looked around at the greatest gathering of athletes representing the best from every nation, I realised even more deeply just how special the Olympics are. This historic competition artfully melds excellence and participation. So even if a country’s top bobsledders, for example, don’t begin to measure up to the rest of the elite bobsledders in the field, they still get to compete.
As we stood in the Barcelona stadium after marching in as a team, it got really quiet. Then an archer lit his bow with the Olympic flame, which had been carried all around the world by thousands of people during the torch relay, aimed for a cauldron high at the top of the stadium and let go. The flaming arrow soared through the air, landed in the cauldron and lit the Olympic flame, which would burn for the duration of the Games. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen.
That would be the last time I would be caught up in the pageantry of the 1992 Olympics. As an athlete, it’s not enough just being an Olympian and taking part. You want to succeed and deliver your best performance. For some athletes that might mean winning Olympic gold. For others, it could mean making it to the finals. For some, just delivering the best possible performance on that day is enough. But I was an athlete who was a world champion. I had proven that I could be an Olympic champion. Now I had to deliver.
I was the favourite to win the 200 metres. During the US Olympic trials, which I won, I had missed the world record by a mere .07 seconds. I knew that all I had to do was not screw up the race (which I hardly ever did), execute the right strategy (which I did most of the time), train hard and be prepared (which I always did and I had done this time), and beat a field of competitors who had never beaten me before.
In short, the only way I could lose the gold medal was if I made a mistake or something happened to me. Something did happen.
BLINDSIDED
I had scheduled my last tune-up race in Salamanca, Spain, for exactly two weeks before I would start competing in Barcelona. The night before the race, my agent and manager Brad Hunt and I went to dinner with a Spanish journalist Brad knew from university who was living in Madrid and had come to Salamanca to see Brad and interview me. He suggested a small Spanish restaurant just off the main square. I remember sitting there enjoying a very good traditional Spanish paella. We had started the meal with some delicious Spanish ham and olives. As I sat there on that temperate summer night, I remember looking at the ham from which they had carved our appetiser hanging near one of the open front doors which extended from one end of the restaurant to the other, all open. I thought, ‘That might not be the most sanitary situation, with cars kicking up dust as they fly up and down the road. This would probably not be allowed in the US.’ Just as quickly, I decided that we have too many laws and rules in America, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. We even returned there for dinner the following night to celebrate my win. I had wanted to have a really good final tune-up race and I had gotten exactly that. Despite a lack of real competition, I ran 19.91 seconds.
As it turns out, my concern about the restaurant’s lackadaisical attitude to hygiene was justified. By the time we reached Madrid airport the next day I was vomiting. I got on the plane and for the next eight hours I was either vomiting, manning the bathroom or sleeping. I felt exhausted even though I had had a full night’s rest. Over the next few days I would seem to be getting better only to see the vomiting and upset stomach return. Eventually, after about five days of this, my lower stomach and intestinal problems finally cleared up.
FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS
Luckily, my condition hadn’t really affected my training, so I wasn’t concerned. However, as I was getting dressed on the day I was leaving for Barcelona, I noticed that a pair of pants that had previously fitted me perfectly felt a bit large in the waist. ‘That’s strange,’ I thought. But I didn’t really worry about it. I figured I probably had lost a little weight because I hadn’t really been eating that much the last few days. No big deal.
When I arrived in Barcelona I got on the scales in the training room. At that point in my career my weight was pretty steady at about 168 pounds, but the scales read 161 pounds. That definitely concerned me. Still, my training was going well, so I felt there was no need to assume that this would affect my performance. So I didn’t mention the weight loss to my coach, Clyde Hart, or anyone else. The last thing I wanted at that point was for people around me to start worrying unnecessarily.
The first round of the 200 metres was scheduled for the morning, and the quarter-final would be held later that same day in the evening. I was excited when I woke up the morning of the first round. It was finally race time in my first Olympics and I was the favourite. I had only lost one 200-metre race over the last two years and since my professional career started. I had won the US Olympic trials, a race in which six of the best 200-metre runners in the world had competed. Because each country can only enter three athletes in each event, three of the best 200-metre runners in the world were not competing in Barcelona. I just had to do what I had been doing to get to this point and I would be the Olympic champion.
I went to the Olympic stadium and went through my normal routine to warm up for the first round. After having been in Barcelona for almost a week, I just wanted to get started. When I began to set my starting blocks for the race, I didn’t think any more about the fact that I was at the Olympics or that my parents and brother and sisters were all in the stands or what was at stake. As the number one ranked 200-metre runner in the world for the previous two years, and the reigning world champion, I was certainly favoured not just to advance to the quarter-finals but basically to be able to jog through this first-round race and win with ease. Even so, I was all business.
I always approached my first-round races that way, even though I didn’t have to since the races are seeded, with the top athletes with the best times coming into the race placed into separate heats. This