by Wyomia Tyus
Another reason I had to sit and listen and think about what was being said and who was saying it was that, a lot of times, when I listened to people speak, they would say one thing in a big crowd, and then, when they were out of that crowd, they would be saying something else. That molded my mind. I had been with them and known them and known what they said and I had to ask, How much of this is you and how much of this is Harry Edwards? Harry was the one, to me, who always had things to say and knew how and why to say them. Not to take anything from Tommie or Lee or Carlos. I think they had things to say too, but Harry had a way of putting it together to make them say, “That’s what I was thinking!” And that’s good because it was needed, but in my regular conversations with the athletes, the things I needed to hear to make me feel a part of it—to make me feel won over—didn’t always come out clearly.
It was also the case that Harry had a lot to gain from it in terms of publicity—because he was the professor, the one who would be invited to speak, the one who could get paid. Tommie and Lee and Carlos couldn’t be paid because of the rules about amateur status. Or they could be paid, but under the table, not up front, and that was always a risk. “He has a lot to gain from it,” Mr. Temple would say, “and I just hope that in his gaining, Tommie and Carlos and Lee and all the others gain something too.” Which of course they did, eventually, but back then nobody knew how it would turn out.
At any rate, my race came before theirs, and I was in the best possible frame of mind, despite all of the goings-on. You have to be able to multitask. And not only that: I had been there already. For me, the pressure of the Olympics was nothing. The pressure of, “What are we doing about human rights? Are we going to boycott or not?” That was a pressure for me. But not to the point that it was going to make me not be prepared for that 100.
* * *
There was a lot of rain in Mexico City, but my workouts were good, and I was running well in all the trials leading up to the finals. There were two other Americans running, Margaret Bailes and Barbara Ferrell, but they were not Tigerbelles. Barbara Ferrell was from the LA Mercurettes and Margaret Bailes was a teenager—she was seventeen—from Eugene, Oregon. She had been running really well, and before we went to the Olympic training camp, Mr. Temple asked me, “Did you see what Bailes was running?
“Yes, Mr. Temple.”
“You’re going to need some more practice.”
No, I’m not, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.
“They’re running all these great times. Ferrell is running great, and Bailes is running great.”
Well, yeah, I thought, because they’re on the West Coast. They’ve got good weather. We’ve got snow. We only get to compete in three meets a year. They get to compete all the time.
Mr. Temple would read stuff about their times and have us running our butts off. Then we’d get to the meets, and we’d beat them. Everywhere. And we’d think, We didn’t have to work that hard!
Also, I had my position about the competition, and it didn’t involve worrying about Barbara Ferrell or Margaret Bailes. At the Olympic Trials, a Sports Illustrated reporter asked me what I thought about Bailes, and I told him, “I don’t think about other people. I let them think about me.”[20]
I knew how to keep my cool. One of my methods—one that they made a lot of fuss about in the press—was to do a little dance as part of my prerace ritual. Before the 100 meters in the Olympics, I was hanging out in the Village and talking to some of the Tigerbelles, and I told them, “When I get to the start of the 100 meters, I’m going to do a dance called the ‘Tighten Up.’”
They all just looked at me. “You ain’t going to do that.”
“Yes, I am.” In the trials, there were people from Jamaica in the stands right near the starting line playing the bongo drums, and that made me feel like dancing. “I’m just going to do the ‘Tighten Up’ before my race,” I said, “so I won’t tighten up during my race.”
This was just a little conversation between Tigerbelles; I wasn’t thinking of telling anybody else. But I must have mentioned it to a couple of guys or maybe one of the other Tigerbelles did, because after the race, one of the guys remarked, “You said you were going to do that. I never believed you would, but you did.”
For me, it wasn’t that much of a stretch. They were playing the music, and people were dancing in the stands, and when you’re standing in front of the blocks, that’s always kind of a dance anyway, all the shaking and wiggling you do, trying to stay loose. And the “Tighten Up” was not all that different from what I would normally do. It’s kind of like a herky-jerky thing. People in the stands knew what it was; it was very popular at that time because of the Archie Bell & the Drells song. In any case, that was my thing, and I did it.
One of my competitors—Raelene Boyle, from Australia—was psyched out by it; she kept looking at me sideways while I was dancing, which was good.[21] I was hoping that it would psych out someone. But it was mostly a comfort thing, for me, to let people know: Hey—this is me. Get in line because I’m feeling fine. There was no way anyone could say to me that I was not going to win that 100 meters. I just felt so confident—in me. I wasn’t saying it out loud to anyone else—except maybe through the dance. But I was thinking that they should be afraid of me because I had the gold medal, that experience, under my belt, and they had nothing on me. Everything Mr. Temple had taught us about experience playing a big part in success, that with experience you know how to handle pressure and do what you need to do to win—I felt all those things. I just thought: I am in a place in my life where this is going to be mine.
At the same time, I wasn’t looking to break any records; I just wanted that gold medal and whatever came with it would come with it. When people ask me, “What records do you have? What records did you break?” I tell them the truth: “I don’t know.” To me, records don’t matter. I could run the fastest time that I had ever run, which would be a record for me, and somebody could beat that time because on a different day in a different place they ran better. But to me it’s not the time that you run that matters. Because time never crosses the tape. It’s the person that crosses the tape. If I ran a twelve flat, I’m okay with that. Some people would say, “You were slow.” And I would say, “You could say that, but what does this gold medal say? It says I’m fast. It says I was the fastest person in the world in that race on that day.” And nothing will ever change that. So I was never a person about time, and that’s why I don’t know too much about my times. I just know that I ran, and that you always have to run as best as you can, and that’s what I did. And in ’68, I thought my best would be the best in the world. I didn’t think anybody could beat me; I didn’t think anybody else had that feeling. Or maybe they did—maybe they felt that same way too. But—oh well. I got the medal.
Other than Raelene Boyle, I couldn’t tell if anyone reacted when I started doing the “Tighten Up”; the people up in the stands were already dancing and cheering and yelling. We had three Americans in the group, so the American fans were cheering for us all, and other people were cheering for the runners from other countries. Mainly, I remember the Jamaican group with the bongo drums; I knew a lot of the people who were part of that group, and they were dancing and having fun, right there at the start of the 100 meters. They were mostly athletes—they had a little section for athletes who wanted to watch the races, so that’s where they were. And that’s how I got to see what happened when Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their stand, from that section. But that was later.
When we were getting ready to start the 100, the weather changed, and it was clear that it was going to rain. I really don’t want to be running in any rain, I thought. Not because I couldn’t. The Tigerbelles trained in the rain all the time. Mr. Temple would look at the weather report in the summertime and he would tell us, “They say it’s going to be raining at noon”—our practice wasn’t until one—“so everybody on the track at twelve.” Just so that we could be out in the rain. “You have
to be able to run in all conditions,” he’d say, “because you never know what it’s going to be like when you race.” So maybe because of all the practice in the rain, I didn’t really want to run in the rain; I knew what it felt like, and it wasn’t my favorite feeling. I wanted that race to be over before it really started to come down.
Then, when we were down at the start, Margaret Bailes jumped. And I thought, Doggone it, it’s going to rain before we get this 100 off. It’s not like today, when you jump and that person is out. Back then, you got three—one, two, and the third jump, you were out.
So we all got back in the blocks, including Margaret Bailes, and then Barbara Ferrell jumped. I was halfway down the track, and as I walked back I was thinking, It is definitely going to rain. Why can’t they just wait for the gun?! That’s all that was going through my head. But of course I couldn’t say anything to anybody.
I was always pretty much the last person to get in my blocks. With or without the “Tighten Up,” I had a fairly extensive prerace ritual. My husband Duane always says, “You cheating Tigerbelles. You were always cheating—stalling—in those starting blocks.”
It is true that we Tigerbelles took our time getting into the blocks. I’d always been taught that you stand in front of your blocks and you shake your legs out—you shake and shake. Take deep breaths. Touch your toes and make sure you’re still shaking while you do. Then you kick your legs out to put them in the blocks—you kick, kick, kick, and put that one in, and then you kick, kick, kick, and put the other one in. Then you sit there on your knees and you look down the track.
I wore a watch when I ran, and people would say, “You’re going to time yourself?”
“Of course,” I would reply, “I’m going to have more than enough time to look at my watch.” The watch was too big for my wrist, so I would have to shake that down too, into the proper position, and then, and only then, would I take my time to get on my mark. I took forever; it’s true.
Sometimes, they would call me out and say, “You’re taking too long.” But it was the same ritual that I always did, and it was nothing that broke any rules. Duane says, “You did that to make those people mad.” But that’s not true. We just did it because we did it. Although sometimes it was an advantage.
When we ran against the Russians in the US-versus-Russia meets, the starters would say, “Runners, take your mark,” and the Russians would run really fast, and—just like that—they were in their blocks. And we hadn’t even started our ritual yet. They would be there, all tensed up like that, forever. By the time we did get down, their little arms were tired. They were really ready to go and wondering, What is taking them so long? Sometimes they waited so long, they would have to raise their hands to get up off the blocks when we were just barely getting down. The Russian team people would get really upset, I know. So the judges would tell us that we needed to get in the blocks a little quicker. We could get in a little quicker, but we weren’t going to be running into our blocks. It wasn’t our fault that when they said to take our mark a second time, the Russians would just go and do the same thing again, running really fast and getting right into their blocks. Even when we got in a little quicker, the Russians ended up on their fingertips for a long time—not as long as the first time, but they were still there for a while. And nobody was supposed to be moving, but by the time we were ready to put our hands down, they would be moving. “The movement needs to stop,” the starter would say. Then, finally, we would all come up to a set position, on our fingertips, all our weight there. The Russians would jerk up onto their fingertips, and they’d be ready to go, and we would slowly rise up to the point where you stop—and they couldn’t shoot the gun until we stopped. So the Russians were under a little more pressure at the start, which is why Duane says we cheated. But I just thought we were smart.
In any case, despite or because of the “Tighten Up” and my typical Tigerbelle prerace ritual, there were two false starts in the 100 in ’68, one by Margaret Bailes and the other by Barbara Ferrell. How bad a false start is depends on where you are on the track. If you’re way over on one end, and the false start is a real burst, you can see it happen, but usually if you’re at the far end, you don’t really see it. Sometimes, even if you’re in the middle, you won’t see somebody jump if they’re on the end. You only find out about the jump when the officials signal it with a second shot, and sometimes that shot is late—I mean, we’re only talking about eleven seconds here—and you’ll be thirty yards down the track, and at that point you’re tired. And if there’s a false start and you hear that second gun, you shouldn’t just stop right quick; you have to run out so that you don’t pull a muscle. But I didn’t feel tired out after Margaret and Barbara jumped. I just thought Barbara had lost her best advantage, and Margaret Bailes too. Because she had a pretty decent start herself. She was young, though, and I think that the whole atmosphere of being in the Olympics had an effect on her.
So when we got back in the blocks, I was thinking, Barbara jumped, so she’s not going to be able to have that fast start she always has. She’s got to sit and sit and sit and wait in those blocks. I could have that one step I need. In my head, it was all just fitting right into what I thought it should be. Beyond that, I wasn’t thinking of anyone—I wasn’t even really thinking of Barbara. The only part of Barbara I was thinking about was the fact that she had a great start and it had, in the past, been hell for me to catch up to her, but maybe that great start wasn’t going to be there for her on this particular day.
When the gun went off, I was out. The best start I’ve ever had, ever in my whole career, was in that Olympics in ’68. The first thing I remember thinking was, I got a good start! I got a good start! I’m out! I’m out front! I’m out front of Barbara! And then I was like: I know she’s coming. And I knew that Poland’s Szewińska—who was Kirszenstein in the ’64 Olympics; she had gotten married—was also in the race. And I thought: She’s going to be coming. But she’s just as old as I am, and I’m faster. All this was going through my head, yet I was running strong, and I never looked back. I didn’t hear Margaret or Barbara or Szewińska—I didn’t hear any of them. Even so, I wasn’t really listening for them. If I was listening for anyone, it was Raelene Boyle, but I had psyched her out, so she was not going to beat me.
Now I was thinking, Stay relaxed, lift your knees, stay relaxed, lift your knees. Don’t forget to lean at the finish line! And then it was over. Just like that.
As soon as I crossed the line, it poured. I mean, poured—like the sky almost fell out. And I thought, Well, thank you. Because it waited for me.
Chapter 8.
After the Deluge
Usually, as soon as you finish a race, the officials shoo you off the track so that the next race can start, but after the 100 in ’68, Howard Cosell, the sportscaster, was running a live feed, and he grabbed my arm. “Wyomia,” he said, “we want to talk to you about the 100 meters,” and then he turned to the camera and said, “We have right here Wyomia Tyus, who just won her second—” But at that point one of the officials started practically pushing me, trying to get me off the track, and Howard shouted, “Leave her alone!”
“She has to get off the track so the next event can start!”
“Get your hands off of her! She’s talking to her country!” Howard kept yelling at the officials until he finally got them away from me. At that point, I was shaking because it was cold, and I was soaking wet. “You’re cold?” he asked.
“A little bit,” I said.
He put his ABC coat around me, turned back to the camera, and said, “I just gave this fast young lady my jacket. She’s shivering!” That was his lead-in. He was just too funny: “She’s talking to her country—get away from her!” Go Howard! But he was a nice person, and I appreciated him giving me his jacket. When I got back from Mexico City, I bought a Paddington jacket—you know, for the bear, the little yellow one?—and I drew ABC on it. It was tiny, and I wanted to present it to him and say, “Look, here�
��s your jacket back—after the rain in Mexico City.” I never got to do it because the day I knew I was going to see him, I forgot it at home. It would have been a cute thing, but it didn’t happen.
While I was talking to Howard—and my country—the officials confirmed who had won by going over all the tapes, checking to see that nobody had run out of the lanes, that I really had crossed the line first, things like that. (I don’t think they were doing drug testing then; I don’t remember having to pee in a cup, so if they were doing testing, they weren’t testing the sprinters, or at least they didn’t test me.) A very short time later—I assume it was a short time, because it was still pouring—I was out on the victory stand.
The rain was soaking us, and I was wiping it away from my eyes, and everybody who looks at the video thinks I was crying, but I wasn’t; I’m not a crier, and I wasn’t crying. The main thing I was feeling was relief—because I had accomplished all my goals. I had my degree. I had won my medal. I am ready for the world! I told myself. I was also thinking about how much my mother and brothers had sacrificed for me to get there and how proud they must have been at that moment. Being up on that stand was just pleasant—I felt the way you feel when everything falls into place, and your life is where you want it to be, and you know you’re at the beginning of a new life—a new phase of your life. For me, at that moment, it meant no more running. I wasn’t thinking of ever running again, after that. I was done. Then they played the national anthem, and I was good to go. I could have gone home that day.
In my mind, that would have been the perfect ending for my second Olympics—with me achieving the second of my two goals and becoming the first person to win back-to-back gold medals in the 100. But as it turned out, there were still some things I had to do—both on the track and off.