Celebration of achievement got mixed up with criticism of celebrations, and that was only part of the confusion on the final night of the 2000 Olympic track and field competition.
The brilliant and the bizarre ran together. The U.S. track team finished a distinctly inglorious Olympics with victories in three of the four relays, while Marion Jones wound up a star even though only three of her five medals were gold.
“It was a strange Olympics,” said Michael Johnson, whose fifth gold medal Saturday went almost unnoticed by the crowd of 105,448 at Olympic Stadium.
Everything about Jones’ Olympics drew attention from the time 2 1/2 years ago she declared her intention to win five gold medals in Sydney. She endured a noisy, combustible mix of hype, heroics and her husband’s doping problems, capped by an impressive third leg on the 4×400-meter relay.
A bronze in the 4×100 relay and gold in the 4×400, exactly the opposite of what would have been expected a couple months ago, made Jones the first woman to win five track and field medals in a single Olympics. Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands won four golds in 1948 and Florence Griffith Joyner of the United States won three golds and a silver in 1988.
Johnson, 33, the star of the 1996 Olympics, anchored the 4×400 relay to win his fifth gold medal in his third and last Olympics. Only two other U.S. men, Ray Ewry (10) and Carl Lewis (9), have won more in track and field.
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“It doesn’t excite [people] anymore if I win, and I’m proud of that,” Johnson said. “You expect me to run fast, and as I get older I won’t be able to do that.”
The U.S. star in the women’s 1,500 meters, Suzy Favor Hamilton of Wisconsin, toppled in exhaustion to the track late in an extremely slow race she had led with 130 meters to go.
Suffering from dehydration and disorientation, Hamilton got up and staggered at a walk to finish last, then collapsed again before being wheeled from the track with her head lolling to one side. An hour later, with her fluids having been replaced intravenously, she was able to walk out of the stadium.
A member of the U.S. women’s sprint relay that finished third, Nanceen Perry, blasted the postrace behavior of the members of the men’s sprint relay that finished first.
It seemed ironic that a famous U.S. diplomat, Henry Kissinger, presented the medals to Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis and Maurice Greene. What was excessive posturing at best and offensive showboating at worst became a heated topic between the runners and the media.
During the victory lap, Williams, 22, draped an American flag over his shoulders, walked around bare-chested and did repeated imitations of poses the pro wrestler known as “the Rock” favors. He kept up the low comedy on the awards podium.
“How do you expect anyone to respect our flag if we don’t respect it ourselves?” Perry said. “Foreigners think we are rude, anyway. This just confirms the whole image they have of us.”
The U.S. track and field performance was hardly a cause for flag-waving. The doping revelations involving Jones’ husband, shot putter C.J. Hunter, the media hysteria about USA Track&Field’s failure to report all its doping cases, and the lowest U.S. medal total (20) since the 1896 Olympics made USATF executive director Craig Masback the most beleaguered man in Sydney. There is the men’s marathon Sunday, but the United States isn’t expected to hit the board.
“I’m proud of the people who did well and disappointed we did not achieve a higher medal total,” Masback said. “But the [track] performances in general at the Games were rather average.”
No world record was set in track and field, only the second time that has happened at the Olympics in the last century (the other was 1948). The reasons included a track surface not considered particularly fast, weather that frequently was windy and a greater emphasis on doping control that may have led some athletes not to play fast and loose.
The fastest race of the meet was the longest women’s track event, the 10,000 meters. Led by Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia, who clocked 30 minutes 17.49 seconds, the three medalists had the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-fastest times ever, and the top six finishers bettered the old Olympic record of 31:01.63. Ethiopia’s Gete Wami added a silver medal to her bronze in the 5,000.
Tulu, also Olympic 10,000 champion in 1992, ran the final lap in a stunning 60.2 seconds. That was three seconds faster than the final lap of the women’s 1,500, won by Nouria Merah-Benida of Algeria in 4:05:10.
“This is for the Arab women so they can develop like other women in the world,” Merah-Benida said.
That development has been particularly hard for Algerian women athletes, who face the wrath of their country’s powerful Islamic fundamentalists. Hassiba Boulmerka, the 1992 Olympic champion at 1,500, had rocks thrown at her because she dared run in shorts and eventually left the country to train.
The brickbats Saturday were hurled at the U.S. men’s sprint relay. The crowd whistled in derision. There was little appreciation that their time, 37.61, was the sixth fastest ever.
Drummond, 32, the veteran relay captain, said the reaction to victory was merely a release of tension. In Australia, where showing off is anathema, it came off like so much American arrogance. The crowd did not change its mind when he and Greene, the 100-meter champion, jogged with Australian flags before the medal ceremony.
“We have so much emotion bottled up,” Drummond said. “We’re not trying to offend anybody. We’re trying to express ourselves the way we know how.
“I will assume all the responsibility for anything negative about the U.S. team.”
Johnson could not take his usually disproportionate share of the credit for the 4×400 victory because his split of 44.22 seconds was slower than all teammates but leadoff man Alvin Harrison (44.5). Antonio Pettigrew (44.1) and Alvin’s twin, Calvin (43.55), ran the other legs.
“I have kept my body in good shape and my coach feels I could go on for another four years,” Johnson said. “But I feel I have done everything I could.”
He leaves the Olympics as the only man to win consecutive 400-meter titles and the only man to win the 200 and the 400 in the same Olympics (1996). But Johnson’s 400 victory came in the aftermath of that by Australia’s Cathy Freeman, among the emotional highlights of the Games.
That is the way it went for the U.S. track team. Even when it won, it lost. Just ask Bernard Williams.
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