Friday, June 12, 1998
By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Six world-class sprinters gathered at the Kaiser High School
track yesterday to prepare for tomorrow's exhibition. Pictured
from left to right: Jeff Laynes, Eugene Swift, Aaron Thigpen,
Bryan Bridgewater, Gregg Saddler and Derek Knight.
Dash of Attitude
Mentality sets sprinters
By Pat Bigold
apart from other runners
Star-BulletinIt's like a title fight that's over in 10 seconds.
At the highest level of competition, there is no margin for error in the 100-meter dash. One split-second lapse of mind can get you blown away.
That's why the athletes who back into the blocks and crouch in a tense, eerie silence until the crack of the gun exist in the highest state of awareness.
"If a fly lands on something five feet away, a sprinter will sense it," said Dacre Bowen, a member of the 1976 Canadian Olympic 4x400-meter relay team.
"A sprinter's senses are so inflamed at the point of competition that he feels, sees everything. He's never so alive as when he's in a race. Never. The draw to the athlete is that this moment is a celebration of life.''
Try to imagine that moment.
It's the ominous breeze before the hurricane. The muffled rattle before the lunge of the snake.
"The tension before the gun really is so thick that you can cut it with your hand -- you don't even need the knife," said 23-year-old University of Mississippi grad Gregg Saddler, one of six world-class sprinters who will compete in an exhibition race tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. at Kaiser High School. "It's so intense you can hear things maybe a mile away."
"There are a thousand reasons not to do well in the 100, and only one reason to do well -- desire," Bowen said.
Bowen, who has coached Punahou to four state boys' track and field championships, said the lineup of sprinters and hurdlers for the 100-meter race, organized by Rudy Huber's Hawaii Elite Track and Field Team, is the largest field of high-quality dash talent ever assembled on a Hawaii track.
A modest prize purse will be offered to the top finishers, who are using the Hawaii trip as a training diversion.
Only one of the visiting athletes -- 32-year-old 110-meter hurdles specialist Eugene Swift -- has competed in the Olympics (1996), and none have ever broken 10 seconds in the 100. But each owns an electronically timed personal record in the 100 -- legitimate or wind-aided -- that's no slower than 10.28 seconds.
The closest to the magic 10-second barrier is 27-year-old Jeff Laynes, a former All-American in the 100 and 200 from Merritt College-USC, who was clocked at 10.01 in 1996.
Two lanes will be reserved tomorrow for the top two finishers in the Aloha State Games' 100-meter race, which will be held earlier on the same track. State prep record-holder Bryan Clay is a favorite to get one of the berths, with "Hawaii's Fastest Man" race winner Kelsey Nakanelua also in the hunt.
The athletes are competing in the outdoor season and are in peak condition. Bowen said he expects a winning time in the low 10's, and there is likely to be a tail wind.
Elite sprinters are much different than the elite distance runners who compete in the Honolulu Marathon each December. They look more like wide receivers and tailbacks, they walk with more of a swagger, and each projects the ''eye of the tiger.''
"By and large, sprinters are a misunderstood breed," Bowen said. "Sprinters are very raw in their emotions. They run very much to the surface, and it's misunderstood by most people as arrogance, as being snotty. It's something that I and almost every sprinter I've met has run into at some point. And it really hurts them because they're not that way deep down.''
The recent Michael Johnson (U.S.) vs. Donovan Bailey (Canada) race, won by Bailey, was preceded and followed by the same kind of verbal sparring that often surrounds a heavyweight title fight.
"That's a very good example of what I mean," Bowen said. "But as much as a sprinter runs against other people, it's not like counter-punching against another athlete. What he's doing is imposing himself upon the field. There is no strategy except in the gamesmanship before a race. There is only your race."
Bowen recalled the sometimes radical behavior of sprinters at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.
"Some athletes would tear apart a room," he said. ''The guy who won the 100 meters (Hasley Crawford of Trinidad) was going around, plowing into peoples' faces, saying, 'I'm gonna kick your ass.' He was fired (up). A lot of people trash talk. That's their way."
"You can talk trash to me before a race, but you won't get a response out of me," Saddler said. "Maybe it's my Southern roots. I'm very relaxed."
He said the Johnson-Bailey verbal circus helped and harmed the sport, ''Because we're not all like that," he said. "Everybody understands it's 100 meters. You run fast or you lose."
Laynes said trash talking isn't a factor like it was in Bowen's heyday. Why?
"Technology, coaching, and money," he said. "A lot more is on the line now in the 100 meters than there was back in 1976."
"It's more of a mind game now," Saddler said.
"There's definitely showmanship, but nobody gets in your face," Laynes said.
He said the reality of the 100 is that pre-race psyching takes its toll.
"You're really only running against maybe two other people in the race because everyone else has been psyched out," he said. "So some unknown could go ahead and win because he doesn't care."
Bowen said the best way to try to understand the behavior of the dash man is to remember this:
"Milers live within minutes and seconds. Quarter-milers live within tenths of a second. But pure sprinters -- they live within hundredths of a second. And to them, one-hundredth of a second is a millennium."
The need for speed
Elite competitors in tomorrow's exhibition at Kaiser High (3:30 p.m.)
Jeff Laynes: 10.16 in the 100 last year. Best of 10.01 in 1996. Olympic Trials 100 semifinalist.
