The Perfect Mile. Neal Bascomb

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СКАЧАТЬ Lawrence, Santee fell under the protection of Bill Easton. The coach invited the youth, who had almost nothing with him but the clothes on his back, to stay at his house until his dormitory was ready. Santee might have been bold-talking and powerful, but he needed someone to care for him. The first morning, over a breakfast of bacon and eggs, Easton told Santee that he needed to set a good example and help lead the team. Easton spoke to him like an equal, and Santee listened.

      Coach Murray had given him the opportunity to run; Coach Easton showed Santee how to turn his raw talent as a runner into greatness. It had little to do with changing his short, clipped stride, which had become ingrained in his youth while running along plough furrows and through pastures where a long stride would have been dangerous on the uneven terrain. Santee did not bring his arms back in a normal long arc, nor drive to the extreme with his kicking foot like most distance runners. Instead he had the quick arm swing and knee action of a sprinter. But with his native speed, coordination, long legs, strong shoulders, and ability to relax, he was able to sustain this sprinter style over long distances. Easton was convinced that reshaping his stride into a more classical motion would do more harm than good, so he taught Santee to harness his power through training, pace judgement, and focus. Soon enough, seniors on his team were struggling to keep up with him in practice and competition.

      Led by Santee, the freshman squad won the Big Seven cross-country and indoor championships – the league that comprised the biggest and best colleges in sport in the Midwest, namely Kansas State, Iowa State, University of Missouri, University of Colorado, University of Nebraska and University of Oklahoma alongside University of Kansas. Santee set the national collegiate two-mile record in 9:21.6 and began to win headlines as the ‘long-legged loper’ who would ‘play havoc’ with most, if not all, of Glenn Cunningham’s records by the time he was finished. In the spring of 1951, at the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships, he took seventeen seconds off the 5,000m record in the junior division, and the next day he placed second in the senior division. By the end of his freshman year, his mile time hovered in the four-minute teens (4:15, 4:16, 4:17). That summer he earned a spot on an AAU-sponsored tour to Japan and found himself running in Osaka, Sapporo, and Tokyo. There he met the American half-miler Mai Whitfield who had won two gold medals at the 1948 Olympic Games. While some athletes were hesitant to share a hotel room with the black track star, Santee gladly jumped at the opportunity. Whitfield taught the young miler to make sure to keep his toes pointed straight ahead when striding, so as not to lose even a quarter inch of distance with each stride. He also explained to Wes that a miler had the time and physical reserves to make only one offensive and one defensive move in the course of a race. When Santee returned to Kansas in August, he felt certain he was ready for more international competition. He announced to local reporters, ‘I want to make the Olympic team and go to Helsinki, Finland.’

      In his second, or sophomore, year this ‘sinewy-legged human jet’, as one reporter described Santee, proved that he was on his way. Some began to compare him to Emil Zatopek, the Czech star who ran everything from the mile to the marathon at world-class levels. This was the level of enthusiasm Santee generated on and off the track. He loved racing in front of large crowds and never tired. His talent just barely outmeasured his confidence. On a flight to one meet, a Kansas Jayhawks team-mate held out a newspaper article to show Wes. ‘Look what it says here … [Santee’s college competitor] Billy [Herd] hasn’t been beaten in any kind of a race for almost two years. That includes relay carries … He’s gobbled up some pretty good boys too, Wes.’

      Santee stretched his boots out into the aisle. ‘Yeah, he’s a good boy. But he hasn’t tried to digest me yet.’

      In two-mile races during his sophomore year, Santee lapped his competitors. In cross-country meets he was slipping into his sweats before other runners had finished. During the indoor season he set record after record in the mile, leading his team to a host of dual meet victories. It was almost too easy. On campus he ran from class to class, and professors set their watches by the precise time at which he started his training sessions.

      In April 1952 at the Drake University Relays in Des Moines, Iowa, one of the year’s most important outdoor track meets, Santee anchored the four-mile relay for his team. When the baton was passed to him, Georgetown’s Joe LaPierre was some sixty yards ahead. Santee blazed three 62-second quarter-miles, yet had trouble gaining ground because LaPierre was running brilliantly himself. As Santee sped into the first turn of the last lap, Easton yelled out, ‘He’s wilting in the sun!’ Santee was finally gaining. Stride after stride he closed the gap. When he burst through the tape yards ahead of LaPierre, setting a national collegiate mile record in 4:06.8, Wes Santee had officially arrived. ‘Santee’s not human,’ said the Georgetown coach. The Des Moines Register quipped, ‘Santee stuck out above every other athlete like the Aleutian Islands into the Bering Sea.’ The national papers picked up the best quote, from the Drake coach: ‘Santee is the greatest prospect for the four-minute mile America has yet produced. He not only has the physical qualifications, but the mental and spiritual as well.’

      But first Santee turned his sights to the Olympics. As holder of national titles in the 1,500m and the 5,000m, he by right qualified for the American trial in each. In mid-June he went to California with Easton to spend a week training. They decided together that he should participate in both trials. ‘I just want to make the Olympic team,’ he told his coach. ‘Time or race isn’t important.’ On 27 June, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Santee placed second in the 5,000m trial, guaranteeing a trip to Helsinki. That night he dined on his customary steak and potato dinner and enjoyed quiet conversation with Easton back at the hotel. The next day, braving one of the coldest June days in Los Angeles history, he readied himself for the 1,500m trial in front of forty-two thousand spectators. Santee looked around for Easton, but couldn’t find him. A whistle was blown, the race called, and Santee approached the starting line alongside milers Bob McMillen and Warren Druetzler, both of whom he was sure he could beat. In the programme listing the qualifiers for the 3.40 p.m. race, Santee was predicted to ‘win as he pleases – he has all year’. He was revved to go.

      Suddenly, two AAU officials grabbed his arm and shuffled him off the track before he could protest. ‘Wes, they’re not going to let you run,’ one official said.

      ‘What do you mean?’ Santee asked, shrugging off their hold on him. ‘What’s going on?’

      Out of the corner of his eye he saw Easton running across the field. Though wearing a jacket, tie, and dress shoes, he was moving fast.

      The race starter called, ‘Runners to your mark!’ and then the gun fired. Santee watched helplessly as the trial started without him.

      Easton finally made it to his side. ‘Wes, I’m sorry. We’ve been in a meeting for over an hour and they’re saying you’re not good enough to run both races, and they won’t let you drop out of the 5,000 to run the 1,500.’

      This wasn’t right. Only the previous week he had run the third fastest 1,500m time in AAU history: 3:49.3. It was the fastest time by an American in years. Santee welled with anger, and with balled fists looked ready to act out his frustration.

      Easton pulled him to one side. The coach had the stocky build of a wrestler, and even then, in his late forties with a fleshy, oval face, he looked capable of stopping this tall athlete if necessary. His voice was calm. ‘They told me you were only 19 [sic] – not good enough to run the 5,000 against Zatopek followed up with the 1,500.I told them we don’t particularly want to run the 5,000; we want to run the 1,500. Their only response was, “You qualified for that, and you have to stay with it.”’

      There was nothing to be done. Easton knew that no Olympic rule forbade an athlete from participating in two events. If he qualified, he qualified. Those were the rules, but the AAU ran the show, and if a rule interfered with what the AAU wanted, its leader either ignored the rule or changed it. This was the first time, yet unfortunately not the last, that the AAU would stand СКАЧАТЬ