Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

A run to remember

Former Jayhawk Billy Mills won the impossible gold in the 10-k race in 1964.

By Mark Dent (Contact)

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

The man chosen by the gods sat in the stands of the Bird’s Nest like any other spectator, his wife of more than 40 years, Pat, beside him.

It was late Sunday night in Beijing, and the men’s 10-k race was about to start on the track. His race.

Hours earlier, a freak of nature named Usain Bolt slept in, ate chicken nuggets, watched TV and ate more chicken nuggets. Then he won the 100-meter dash. Before that, Michael Phelps pumped his arms for one more stroke in the 100-meter butterfly and tapped the wall one-hundredth of a second before the seemingly frozen-in-time Milorad Cavic.

Other moments: Shawn Johnson balanced on the narrow suede beam like a tight-rope walker and finally won her gold medal. And Jason Lezak made the French relay team look like a bunch of cream puffs.

Those have been the stories of these Olympics. Thirteen days in, just three left, and they’ve captivated continents. Billy Mills, the chosen one who watched the 10-k on Sunday from the bleachers, ran the same race faster than any American previously had a generation ago. His tale is like any good family tradition. It will never be forgotten.

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics belonged to him. Mills, a former KU All-American, a Lakota Sioux who lost both his parents at an early age, an unknown distance runner who matched up with four gold medallists at the starting line of the 10-k, unexpectedly did something no American man had ever done and has never done since.

He won that race. And he continues making magic today.

n n n

Bob Timmons tells you he’s sorry. He doesn’t mean to blur his words. It’s just that he gets a little emotional when he talks about Billy Mills.

Timmons, a championship KU track and cross-country coach, never coached Mills. He knows him well though. Knows about the poverty, knows about the discrimination, knows how Mills worked as hard as anyone Timmons has ever met.

“For him to achieve such a high level,” Timmons said, “it’s almost impossible.”

Mills grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. About half of all people there lived under the poverty line. To this day, some people on the reservation lack running water and electricity, and the life expectancy is about 30 years lower than the national average.

Mills could tell you about this. Cancer took his mother away from him when he was eight. In the following months, his father comforted him by embedding the Olympic dream into his spirit.

He’d read Mills stories about athletes: those who jumped, those who ran, those who competed at the Olympics. One of the articles said the Olympians were chosen by the gods.

That’s what Mills wanted. He wanted to be a chosen one. That’s how he could get close to her.

“I thought if I was chosen by the gods,” Mills said, “I would see my mom again.”

His father passed away about four years later. At age 12, Mills was an orphan. He wanted to be an athlete. That’s how he could get close to his father, too.

He wasn’t very fast at first, but distance running rewards work and sweat and pain. Soon Mills was one of the best high school runners. The boy who never could’ve afforded college had scholarship offers to several schools. He chose Kansas.

Mills became an All-American three years in a row but still faced discrimination. He was asked to sit out of a picture at the national championships because of his race.

It was just another obstacle. He kept running. In 1964, he made the Olympics.

n n n

Australian Ron Clarke was the 10-k world record-holder. Soviet Pyotr Bolotnikov won the 10-k at the 1960 Olympics. New Zealander Murray Halberg was the defending champ in the 5-kilometer race. And Tunisian Mohammed Gammoudi was ahead of his time, a great African distance runner before Kenyans and Ethiopians began dominating the sport.

Mills was Mills. The unknown. An accomplished American no doubt, but at a starting line stocked with the world’s best in Tokyo, no one expected him to medal.

The gun goes off. The unknown sticks with the leaders for 15 laps and with 10 laps to go, he’s still up there. With just a few laps to go, only Clarke, Mills and Gammoudi are together in the lead. The rest have fallen off.

The race gets hectic now. Clarke’s been trying to kill the competition with surges. He’s done one on almost every lap. He’s the king, the world record holder. His best time is 28 minutes 15 seconds. Mills’ best is 29:10. Gammoudi has never broken 29 either. Clarke can’t shake them.

The historic happens with one lap to go. The bell rings with Mills in front, 27:24. A diabetic, Mills could tell he was low on blood sugar. He didn’t have much left.

Clarke steals the inside lane and pushes Mills to the outside, and now Mills is in third, behind Clarke and Gammoudi.

Backstretch. Gammoudi sprints several meters ahead of Clarke and Mills. Mills isn’t even in the camera frame with less than half a lap to go. The three runners arrive at the home stretch. It’s Gammoudi, Clarke then Mills. They’re about to lap seven runners.

Mills is boxed in by a German. The runner moves to the fifth lane, clearing the fourth for Mills. He sprints by and glances at the German’s jersey. Mills swears he sees the German insignia, an eagle. It’s a sign from his dad.

Before he died, he gave Mills this message: follow your dreams and you’ll have the wings of an eagle.

“My thoughts became wings of an eagle,” Mills said. “I can win, I can win, I can win!”

He pushes through. Thirty meters left. Still in third. Twenty meters left. He passes Clarke. Ten meters. He passes Gammoudi.

Mills touches the tape. He wins with a time of 28:24.

“His achievement,” Timmons said, “was the greatest of anything I’ve ever seen.”

The German passes Mills and continues on for his final lap, and he wants to get another glimpse of the eagle on the runner.

Mills looks for it. But it’s not there. The Olympic rings are the only symbol on the German’s jersey.

n n n

Al Gipp gathered with the rest of his Fort Yates High School classmates for an assembly and saw that a hero had come to speak to them. Mills. He addressed the crowd at the tiny school in North Dakota.

Olympians weren’t usually like Gipp and his friends. They thought the best athletes came from far away exotic places, like California or Florida.

Mills was the opposite. He was one of them. From the Dakotas, from tougher circumstances than Gipp could even imagine.

Gipp, now the track and cross-country coach at Haskell Indian Nations University, hung on Mills’ every word as he retold the story of his Olympic race and showed the famous clip. He remembered hearing about the bump.

Mills told the students how he got pushed by Clarke late in the race and kept running. It was like life.

“That was the thing,” Gipp said. “Hey, you’re still in the race even though you might get bumped a little bit.”

Mills has been sharing that same message ever since he won the gold medal. He gives more speeches than former presidents, co-wrote a book that’s about discovering happiness through a spiritual journey and is the spokesperson for Running Strong for American Indian Youth.

Dropout rates, suicide rates and alcohol abuse rates are much higher for Native Americans than most other racial groups. Mills tries to make a difference.

Sometimes it’s as simple as providing pencils and backpacks for children. Running Strong has also built community gardens, food centers, cultural institutions, museums, houses and water wells.

And of course, the organization promotes activity and youth sports. Mills wants the children to pursue their dreams. To gain their eagle wings.

The Olympics gave Mills his truest feeling of belonging, a sense of global unity, that everyone could relate to each other if they tried to understand the different cultures.

He wants everyone to gain that same feeling in their own way. To feel like they’ve been chosen by the gods.

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