When I was competing, absolute 100 per cent focus was necessary for me to perform at my best, and the only way I could be sure of achieving that 100 per cent focus was to have 100 per cent control of my environment. So you may wonder why I decided to let NBC cameras follow me during my bid to win double gold at the 1996 Olympics. In the moment when I need to be focused the most, I would have a camera in my face every time I turned around.
Why had I agreed to that?
A few months earlier, I was going to be photographed for the Sports Illustrated Olympic issue and would most likely be featured on the cover. I had already been photographed for the cover of Time magazine’s Olympic issue. The day the photographer came to photograph me for Sports Illustrated, however, I was training alone in Dallas, away from Coach. My training sessions were always conducted with the same seriousness and focus as for a competition and I didn’t like distractions. If someone tried to talk to me during my training session I got offended. ‘How would you appreciate it if I came on to your job and started taking pictures of you and asking you for an autograph while you were at your desk trying to get an important report out?’ I might even ask the intruder.
I could be a real ass, even if there was some justification. But I was not particularly understanding in those days, a less than stellar trait which re-emerged the day the Sports Illustrated photographer showed up. I wasn’t in a very good mood anyway and just wanted to get my training session done without the cameras around. But the photographer kept asking me to do more and more takes so that he could get the shot he wanted. I finally snapped. ‘I’m a professional and good at what I do,’ I barked. ‘You’re a professional and good at what you do. So you should be able to get the damned shot without me having to run a million times.’ We finished the shoot despite a definite sense of tension, and Sports Illustrated put the USA women’s basketball team on the cover.
This was my chance to redeem myself with the media. NBC had sent a producer and camera crew down to get some footage of me training for one of the profiles they would show about me during the television coverage of the Games. But I had a rule that I didn’t allow anyone to film my practices. Just as I sought perfection in every race, I looked for perfection in practice. Since that ended whenever onlookers were present, I wound up keeping my practices closed. I just couldn’t afford the disruptions.
So we compromised. The film crew could be there, but would have to stay behind the fence that went around the track since I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable with cameras two feet from my face while I was trying to work. Even though those television cameras have huge lenses that can zoom in, the camera guys and producers hated being kept at a distance and would keep trying me. Finally they tried one too many times. I was never a person to go off and scream or yell at people, but I answered with a firm, deep-voiced ‘No’ accompanied by a glaring and effective stare.
A couple of weeks later, my agent Brad finally confronted me. I would need to lighten up on some of my rules and be a little bit more accommodating to the media if I wanted to capitalise on the Olympic opportunity from a marketing standpoint.
Apparently the shoot’s producer had come back saying that I was extremely difficult to work with and they had gotten nothing that really told much of a story. ‘They are planning to focus on you as the primary story of these Games, but they want access,’ Brad told me, adding that they wanted to follow me each day. I saw the look on Brad’s face and I knew he was right. The smart thing was to agree. So I did.
It turned out that having the cameras follow me over the Opening Ceremonies weekend wasn’t so bad. I actually had a good time with the camera guys, joking and being myself. They were very pleased with what they got and couldn’t believe how much access I gave them and how much I seemed to enjoy it. But I hadn’t been about to race then. All that would change in three days’ time, when I would be competing in one of the biggest races of my life. Truth be told, I was a little afraid and would need to be more focused than I ever had been before.
Still, I knew I was in the best shape of my life. I had just had the most incredible training session of my career.
‘Shouldn’t you be able to deal with some cameras?’ I asked myself.
‘Yes, you should,’ I answered. ‘But do you want to take that chance?’
I did not. I wanted to retain absolute control, so that I could retain absolute focus. So I proposed a compromise. There could be no talking to me and I would not be talking to the camera crew. They could have a camera with me, but they had to stay a few feet away. They were happy with the compromise. As it was, it would take even more focus from me to block out the cameras and concentrate on what I needed to do.
In hindsight, I wish I had interacted better with the media as an athlete. But I felt insulted when interviewers asked me questions that they felt would generate the answers they were fishing for. It was like they felt they were smarter than me. I didn’t like that. Being competitive, I set out to show them that I was actually as smart as them or smarter. That would cause some tension between me and some of the media, but it didn’t impact on the work I did on the track.
COPING WITH FAME
I’m far from being the only champion athlete who has struggled with the seeming omnipresence of media and public attention. Athletic stardom certainly brings ample financial rewards. Athletes, at least those in mainstream Olympic sports, who previously struggled to make a living become financially comfortable if not downright wealthy. But that comes at a personal cost that’s higher than most people realise. Cathy Freeman admitted to me that being thrust into superstardom after her Olympic home victory probably cost her a longer career. ‘I wasn’t comfortable with it then and I still am uncomfortable with it today at times. I still have a hard time coping with the glare and the attention of that night. People still come up to me and they’re still blown away, telling me their story and their memory of that night. Part of me wants to disengage. I want to move on now. For me, it was such a business transaction, in a sense. I know you get this. You get on with it, get it over and done with, and get out of there. The whole political case, arguments came into it. There’s no more energy for emotional engagement, because it’s hard work. It’s hard to take on that beautiful burden and responsibility into your future, because then the precedence has changed. I didn’t mean to become an agent of change ever in my whole life. I was just a girl trying to be the best runner I could be.’
To avoid her sudden stardom at home, Cathy didn’t compete the year after the Olympics, choosing to leave Australia as often as possible. ‘In hindsight, and hindsight’s a great time, I really believe that my running career had ended as soon as I crossed the line in Sydney,’ she told me. ‘I found it really hard to find that same level of discipline and application that only comes from when you really want to do something. I was taking shortcuts in my workouts. I just felt like a bit of a shadow next to the athlete I used to be, next to the woman I used to be.’
As Cathy’s story reveals, public scrutiny is one of the most difficult issues to contend with. That’s certainly been the case for Usain Bolt, who has suddenly found himself in the middle of a media storm, with unceasing demands on his time. ‘It’s always so much,’ he says. ‘Every day people want me to do this, do that. It’s hard for me because I just want to be a normal guy, play some PlayStation, play some football, chill with my friends.’
The demands are particularly hard for someone like Usain who is a homebody at heart. When I mention that one of the advantages of being in an international sport like athletics is getting to travel all around the world, make international friends and experience other cultures, he says that while he likes being on the road he doesn’t go out. ‘A lot of people like to see sights. I’m not like that. I’d rather stay in and watch TV, play on my video games, listen to my iPod, or whatever. That’s how I am.’ Most telling, perhaps, is the destination that caught his fancy. ‘I really enjoyed Monaco,’ he told me. ‘I was wondering if I could get a place there. As I said to the Prince, “It’s quiet.” The people who are there are like I am, so you won’t get bothered that much.’
Usain is clearly still wrapping his head about his new-found fame and fortune, along with the burden of single-handedly carrying athletics and the continued suspicions that come with obliterating world records.
People assume when you become famous that you sought and continue to court that celebrity. While that’s true for many athletes, a few of us just wanted to go fast or do our sports to the best of our abilities. Suddenly, because of your accomplishment, you become public property.
That’s what happened to me in 1996. By the time that incredible year was over, so many things had changed in my life. I started the year as a world champion sprinter and one of the best athletes in my sport. In my sport I was known and I was doing quite well financially from my endorsement deals with Nike and Ray-Ban sunglasses. But I wasn’t famous. Track is a small sport relative to the entire world of sport, which includes team sports and those like tennis and golf that benefit from the fact that they are also recreational sports. That attracts a lot more fans, and thus sponsorship, advertising, television revenue and of course visibility. Ironically, I was better known in the UK and around Europe where I competed than I was in the US. That wasn’t a problem for me since I enjoyed my anonymity. I was happy and enjoying my life as a single man and my new success.
By the end of 1996 I was a double Olympic champion and world record holder and the undisputed king of my sport. I had accumulated a larger portfolio of endorsement agreements than any previous US Olympic athlete. I had a book coming out, my own personal Swatch watch, and I was being paid more money to make appearances than I was to compete. I had become a wealthy individual. I was dating the supermodel Tyra Banks. I was no longer bigger in Europe than I was in the US. I couldn’t go anywhere without people asking for autographs or pictures or just wanting to talk to me.
That took some getting used to. I wasn’t used to not being in control. I wasn’t used to having to deal with so many fans and requests for my time. I wasn’t used to having to interrupt whatever I might be doing to accommodate a fan request. Before long, I realised how much I disliked that side of what my success had engendered. I started to stay home more. I became less trusting of strangers. I started to be more aware of my surroundings at all times, and I am still that way now. From the time I achieved my goals in Atlanta at the 1996 Olympic Games until this point, and I’m sure for the remainder of my life, I must be careful about what I don’t do, what I do and how I do it. I have to adjust how I live my life because I’ve become a celebrity.
You have to learn how to deal with life in the limelight. Just like the way strangers feel entitled to pat a pregnant woman’s belly, a boundary gets erased. It doesn’t matter if you’re having a quiet dinner out with your family. If you don’t disrupt that to give someone an autograph, you’re in the wrong. I actually got an email once from a guy who said what a shame it was that he had helped me get to where I was by contributing money to the Olympic Committee, and then I didn’t give him an autograph at a restaurant.
While many athletes do court celebrity, some of us just want to go about our lives. That’s not always easy. Nine times out of ten, the person who comes up to me expects me to drop what I’m doing and leave the people that I’m out having a good time with or my family. I’m supposed to ignore the people I’m with and basically tell them, ‘You come second to my fans. My fans are first.’ Because that’s what that fan is used to getting. Most other athletes will do that. They don’t want to annoy any fan, because that’s where their stardom comes from, and they’ve got to make sure they keep feeding that stardom.
That’s just not me. Although since 1996 I have been defined – and will continue to be defined – as the Olympic champion who made history in the Atlanta Games, I’m the same person now that I was before. I don’t think that the success, the celebrity, the realisation of a dream or any of that changed me for good or bad. I had always tried to be the best person I could be and I was already confident in myself on and off the track. But for the first time after ’96 I started to seriously consider the next phase of my life. I started to contemplate starting a family and what type of career or interests I would pursue after my career ended. And I started to think about when and how my career would end.
Clearly my life had changed. From 1990 when I first started my professional career as a sprinter until I retired, the timeline of my life was based on the four-year cycle of the Olympic Games. Prior to 1996 I was in a mode in which I was very much trying to reach my potential and establish myself as the best ever in my sport. I was the ultimate competitor at that point. Between Atlanta and Sydney I was in a mode where I was trying to break through limits and set new standards, not just on the track but as a sprinter who was doing things unprecedented in the sport on the track and off the track. I had transcended track. People knew me not just as a great sprinter but as a celebrity. After Sydney my life has been all about taking the platform that was established as a result of Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney and building businesses that provide services and products to help other people achieve success based on the philosophy that I established over my career. In other words, I have managed to use the celebrity that my running engendered to strive for and achieve new goals in new arenas. But the goal is not – and has never been – fame.
I never expected the kind of renown that, for better and for a little worse, would define my life. That’s not the kind of neighbourhood I came from. The same holds true for Rebecca Adlington.
‘Getting into swimming, you never think, right, I’m going to be on TV or famous, because it’s such a small sport,’ she told me when I asked her about dealing with the celebrity that has accompanied her success. ‘Before Beijing it was absolutely fine. You just went about your day as it was. After Beijing I suddenly got major commitments and all that sort of stuff that goes along with winning gold medals. It was really different and I struggled at the start because I didn’t have the balance away from the pool. As soon as I was away from the pool, I was talking about swimming.’
Before her success, Rebecca had left her work in the pool, much like the way most of us leave our work at the office. When she suddenly found she was famous, ‘it affected me’, she admitted. ‘I felt the pressure and I couldn’t get away from it. I couldn’t find something to just relax.’
That proved overwhelming. ‘I didn’t have an agent in Beijing. You just don’t if you’re a swimmer. When I came back, all this stuff was thrown at me. It was a rush to find an agent to deal with that. I managed to get an amazing one, and learned what I am comfortable with and what I’m not. But I still don’t like the attention. I’m just not that sort of person. I think some people desperately want to be famous and be on TV. Not me.’
LIVING IN THE PUBLIC GLARE
Rebecca still seems uncomfortable with her sudden fame, especially in her home town. ‘Nobody where I grew up was ever famous. I’m the only celebrity, if you want to call it that, from Mansfield. It’s such a small place, there’s no one else.’ She’s even more uncomfortable with living under the microscope – or through the looking glass. Like Alice, she feels like she’s stumbled down a rabbit hole and into a world she wasn’t brought up in and doesn’t quite understand. Foremost among those elements that bewilder her is the criticism levelled at her by the press and public alike. All too often, the barbed – and even nasty – comments focus on her appearance.
She confessed to me how difficult it is to have people judge her outside the pool. ‘I know I’m not the most attractive girl in the world. It doesn’t bother me. It’s one of those things. I’m not trying to be a model. I’m not in the papers because I want to be pretty. I’m just a swimmer!’
Physical appearance has never been a problem for Rebecca because she loves swimming. Indeed, the body that is judged harshly on land is part of what has earned her gold. That makes the constant criticism all the more baffling. ‘I don’t understand why people have to comment on how I look and think they can have a go at me for it. People will email or text, “God, you’re ugly.” Why would you say that to someone? I would never send that kind of message to anyone, whether I knew them or not. What goes through people’s heads to say that sort of thing? It’s unnecessary and hurtful, but they just don’t care.’
‘Back off,’ Rebecca would love to tell her critics in both the public and private forums. ‘I just want to swim.’ Instead, she does her best to simply ignore it. ‘It’s got to the point where I don’t read the paper. I don’t look online. My dad gets all those Google Alerts or whatever. I won’t do any of that for myself. I will not Google my name. I don’t like looking at the criticism. I don’t see the point of putting that in my head and making me feel insecure about something that is not what I’m trying to do. As a woman especially, when you’re getting knocked all the time it’s very difficult to be confident. And I’m a confidence swimmer. I need to feel confident before a race. So if somebody sends me a message or something on Twitter or Facebook, I delete it straight away. Even though I know that I’m extremely good at my sport, I don’t want some comment about something I can’t control to affect the confidence I have in the pool.’
Being the public butt of jokes by people like comedian Frankie Boyle, who made some unpleasant comments about her appearance on the BBC’s Mock the Week in August 2009, created a fallout that proved even more hurtful.
Rebecca claimed that the jokes didn’t hurt her feelings. ‘I love comedians,’ she told me. ‘I am the first person to take the piss out of myself. I am the first person to laugh at things like that.’ However, when Boyle was publicly chastised because of the flood of complaints triggered by his bad taste, people blamed Rebecca. ‘Everyone was so hurtful about it,’ she said. ‘They attacked me, saying that I was the reason that he got thrown off, that I should just get over it or have plastic surgery. I couldn’t actually believe these people. I didn’t do anything. I haven’t even spoken about it in interviews. I didn’t even care about the comments.’
The level of very personal, undeserved criticism that Rebecca has had to deal with is hard to fathom, let alone understand. But most successful athletes, especially Olympic champions, become the focus of public attention and wind up living in the limelight. Nadia Comaneci would prove a notable exception. Not that she wasn’t the media darling in 1976. She was voted the 1976 BBC Sports Personality of the Year in the overseas athletes category and named as the 1976 ‘Female Athlete of the Year’ by both UPI and Associated Press, but her accomplishments weren’t heralded the same way back home in Romania. Although she was named a ‘Hero of Socialist Labour’ she wasn’t a huge celebrity in her own country, in part because television programmes only aired there between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. at that time. ‘Media was not allowed to come into the country and interview me,’ she recalled. ‘Everything was controlled by the government, so I wasn’t bothered by any kind of media at all. The only thing that was a big surprise after I won the Olympics were the crowds of people who would come to see me compete. “I wonder why they do that?” I thought.’
The lack of fanfare shielded Nadia Comaneci from the pressures of celebrity. However, her sudden popularity brought with it the inevitable pressure to perform up to a new level of expectation. Nadia, who would receive the Olympic Order, the highest award bestowed by the International Olympic Committee, in 1984 and 2004, suddenly felt that she had to be even better than before. I asked her if that made competitions more difficult. ‘No, it just makes you more nervous when you compete,’ she said. ‘But once the music starts, and you go on an event, that kind of goes away a little bit. I was very well prepared at all times. I knew I was very well prepared. But at the same time I knew I could make a mistake, because it takes very little to mess it up. And I’ve done it a couple of times.’
For those athletes not protected from the limelight like Nadia, Sally Gunnell may just have the answer. Towards the end of her career Sally felt the pressure of media scrutiny even more than she had at first. ‘I went through a stage where I was almost trying to be somebody else, because you think you should,’ she said. ‘I’ve learned just to be yourself. That probably goes back to that self-doubt that I’ve had to fight through the years, but it’s something I pass on and take with me now. You know what? Someone doesn’t like you? That’s their problem. This is me. Be yourself. Just get on with it.’
That’s not a lesson that Daley Thompson ever needed to learn.
‘What’s the one personality trait that you feel contributed most to your success as an athlete?’ I asked him.
‘What are my options?’ he asked.
‘Well, there’s your confidence,’ I answered. I think the supreme confidence that allows Daley to blaze his own path without worrying about what others think gave him an unparalleled edge. Even now, for example, he will show up to evening functions, no matter how formal, in the shorts, T-shirt or polo shirt and trainers he’s always worn. The closest he gets to a suit and tie is a jogging suit. That’s what he’s always worn all of his life and that’s what he continues to wear, even if the rest of us are in tuxedos.
Being his own person and saying whatever is on his mind without a second thought has led to some significant run-ins with the media. ‘I think it was more an issue for them than it was for me,’ Daley told me. ‘The media summon you to the press room as if they’re royalty. And then they just want to tear you down. I was never in it for attention or celebrity. I just wanted to be good at sport and didn’t need either of those. So I had no need for the media. And the media have a problem with people who don’t need them.’
MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Ironically, like Muhammad Ali, Daley managed to control the media because he said what he wanted to say, wasn’t political about it, and didn’t care about the consequences of what he said. He had his points and he was going to make them. Years after his athletic career, Muhammad Ali ultimately became a hero to more people than ever worldwide. As Daley gets farther away from his competitive years he seems to have mellowed somewhat and the public seem to have embraced him more. But along the way I am sure there have been some missed opportunities, because being politically correct has traditionally been something of a prerequisite for endorsements and appearances for Olympic athletes. But I’m also sure that, even knowing this in hindsight, Daley would still rather be himself than compromise who he really is in exchange for any financial opportunity.
But it’s not just about how others – whether the public or the media – react to you once you achieve the fame that so often accompanies athletic success at this elite level. It’s how you, the athlete, deal with it.
Getting caught up in the whole celebrity thing is a huge danger for athletes, especially once they achieve Olympic stardom. Prior to 1996 I was much better known outside the US, where track was a much bigger sport, than I was inside the US, where track can’t compete with the big team sports. But as a result of my performance in Atlanta in 1996 I was offered opportunities to become spokesperson for – or investor in – companies. I was offered television and movie parts. I was invited to all kinds of celebrity parties and events across the US. I wasn’t interested. I was always thinking, ‘I’ve got a season starting next year. Even though it sounds kind of fun, I can’t do all this stuff. I have to get ready to run again.’
I am sure I left many opportunities on the table when I was at the height of my celebrity after the 1996 Olympics. At the time I didn’t see this as a sacrifice, because I was so focused on training and maintaining my athletic dominance. I saw myself first and foremost as a track athlete, and I always put that first even after I got famous. My life was really designed to revolve around my track career. It was my job, my hobby and my favourite pastime. So other things just didn’t fit.
These days, however, too many athletes focus on cementing their celebrity instead of their careers. In this reality television era there’s a huge desire to get their face and name out there. In the past the only opportunity to embrace your fame and get out there as much as possible was when you were at competitions and there was media around to report on you. Now these athletes can be much more pro-active in developing the celebrity status that comes with having had Olympic success. So they have websites and Facebook and MySpace pages. Last year, while covering the European Championships for the BBC, I noticed that British 400-metre runner Martyn Rooney tweeted something after his quarter-final. When I ran into him I said, ‘Martyn, stop tweeting and just focus on running.’
At the end of the day, it takes a lot of focus to be an Olympic athlete. As soon as you come off the track from a race, your focus has to be on your performance. How did that go? How did I run? Let me sit down and catch up with my coach as quickly as possible so we can review it and figure out what adjustments we need to make in the semi-final. If your focus is on having more Twitter followers than someone else and getting to your phone and tweeting about how the race went, you’re competing in the wrong arena and for the wrong reasons. You’re no longer interested in being a great athlete. You just want to be famous.
There is a skew in terms of values right now that is societal. There are a lot of people who are really well known for doing absolutely nothing or for doing the wrong thing. We also live in a very litigious society, where we want to essentially do anything except take responsibility for our own actions. All of these general societal issues that we’re dealing with, including the sense of entitlement that the younger generation seems to have developed, is reflected in the microcosm of the athletic arena. So instead of concentrating on finding ways to improve their performance, it’s often about image instead.
Of course, it can be argued that I was too focused on my athletic career and that I should have been more accessible while I competed. The fact is that dealing with the media would remain a challenge during my entire racing career. Even at the beginning, when the coverage was all pretty positive, I found it overwhelming and somewhat uncomfortable. The fact that the coverage eventually started to turn negative made everything that much worse.
TARGETED
The portrayal of the 150-metre Fastest Man in the World challenge against Donovan Bailey was a shock to me. After the Olympics in 1996, when I ran 19.32 seconds to win the gold medal at 200 metres in Atlanta, people began to call me the fastest man in the world. Traditionally that title has always automatically gone to the current 100-metre world record holder, world champion or Olympic gold medallist. In 1996 all three of those titles belonged to Donovan Bailey. Donovan had broken the world record for 100 metres at the 1996 Olympics and in that same race he won the Olympic gold medal. On top of that, he was already the defending 1995 world champion. Yet because I had run faster over 200 metres in terms of miles per hour than anyone else previously in history, there was an argument that I was the fastest man in the world.
Being labelled the fastest man in the world didn’t really matter to me because that’s never been an official title. What mattered most to me was that I was the Olympic gold medallist at 200 metres and 400 metres, and that I had accomplished what no one else ever had. I was proud that I had run the 200 metres so fast that people were starting to rethink the unofficial fastest man title. But it didn’t go beyond that.
Donovan, however, I think felt slighted once people started calling me the fastest man in the world. And even though he and I had had a good relationship of mutual respect, I felt he started to treat me differently. Then the media started to talk about a match race between Donovan and me to determine who really was the fastest man in the world.
I never backed down from a challenge. I sure wasn’t about to shy away from this one, especially since in trying to persuade people that he was the fastest man in the world, he chose to talk negatively about my accomplishments to the media. There was no way I was going to tolerate that.
I had noticed that Donovan had not had a very good season going into the 1996 Olympics as the defending world champion. He had had many sub-standard races, had not won very many races on the European circuit, and did not look impressive in the early rounds in Atlanta. Even in the final of the 100 metres, for the first half of the race he wasn’t winning, although he did pull out the victory in stunning fashion and broke the world record to win the Olympic gold. I pointed out to the media how inconsistently he had run lately, adding that I had respect for how he was able to pull out a victory when the pressure was on. ‘But if I line up against him for 150 metres,’ I concluded, ‘there is no way he will beat me.’
The press only reported my comments about Donovan’s inconsistency at the beginning of the season and my claim that he would never beat me. That started an even bigger firestorm and rivalry. So promoters started to talk with my agent and Donovan’s agent about a race between us over 150 metres. There was a lot of buzz about this race and a lot of excitement about the potential showdown between the two of us. I felt that there were other people who legitimately had a claim to this title of fastest man in the world and that they should be allowed to be part of the race as well. A field including world-class runners like Linford Christie, representing Great Britain, Ato Boldon, who had won a bronze at 100 metres as well as 200 metres in Atlanta, representing the Caribbean, Frankie Fredericks, who had just won silver at 100 metres and 200 metres, representing Africa, and American Carl Lewis, one of the biggest names in the sport at the time, would have been an incredible and truly global race of the fastest men in the world. Donovan disagreed.
Ultimately it was decided that a head-to-head showdown between Donovan and me with no other athletes would be best. I agreed because I just wanted to race. The event was scheduled for May 1997 in Toronto. In the months leading up to the race, however, Donovan seemed to be unable to talk about his own chances of winning the showdown race without trying to discredit my abilities. The media ate it up. And although I didn’t want to respond, preferring to talk about my own accomplishments and why I could win the race, I couldn’t let his taunts go unchallenged.
Still, I focused on my training and arrived in Toronto ready to run. From the moment I got there I was caught off guard, which I hate. Unbeknownst to me, this had become an American versus Canadian affair, with everyone on Donovan’s home turf hoping that he would beat me. The Canadians, who have always had a bit of an inferiority complex being so close to the US, were beside themselves with the fact that in Donovan Bailey they had an Olympic sprint champion who was better than the neighbouring Americans. He had also helped them overcome the embarrassment caused eight years earlier by Ben Johnson and his positive test and ban for steroids during the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
The race had been set up over 150 metres, with 75 metres on a curve and 75 metres on a straight. That was a race that I knew I could win. Donovan was not a great curve runner and I always have been. The fact that I was stronger than him also worked in my favour. After some last-minute nonsense on Donovan’s part, including him saying in a press conference that I didn’t really want to run against him, I decided to show just how confident I was in my ability to win this race by putting my money where my mouth was. Donovan and I had each been given $1 million to run this race, with an additional $1.5 million going to the winner. I now challenged him: ‘I am willing, if you are, to put my $1 million into the prize money and winner takes all.’ Donovan declined the offer.
Race day finally arrived. The gun went off and I got a great start. Then, abruptly, I pulled my quadriceps muscle, thereby ending the race. On crossing the finish line Donovan immediately started telling the media that I was faking the injury and that I didn’t want to run against him. Of course the Canadian media fans supported him on this, which upset me. But I thought that I would be able to count on support from my own country. I was wrong. The criticism I received from the US media was as hurtful as it was disappointing. But that’s America and that’s what makes it different. It’s a tough place that breeds tough competitors and tough athletes. American sports media don’t support an athlete simply because he’s American. They will criticise you just as much as anyone else. I was a big star, so I was a target.
PROVING MYSELF
After that race and during the remainder of the 1997 season I was determined to prove to the world number one that I wasn’t a quitter or a faker and that I was the same fierce competitor that I had been when I went to the Olympic Games, the biggest event in athletics, and attempted do something that had never been done before. So when the doctor told me that I should not compete any more that season to let the injury heal, that was not an option for me. I continued to rehab and continued to train and eventually over-reached.
In my eagerness to get back out there and prove myself to the world, I went to Paris to run the 400 metres, a race that I had not lost in seven years. My fourth place finish clearly showed that I hadn’t recovered from my injury. But a few media outlets talked about how this loss, coupled with what they called my ‘loss’ to Donovan Bailey in the match-up race, was evidence of post-Olympic complacency.
I was advised again by my doctor and my coach not to compete. But because I hadn’t been healthy during the US championship and hadn’t made the US team, the IAAF had actually instituted a new rule specifically to allow all defending champions an automatic entry to the 1997 World Championships in Athens. So I continued to train and showed up at the World Championships for the 400 metres far less than 100 per cent fit. In the first round I could feel that I wasn’t 100 per cent. In the quarter-finals, feeling that I needed to conserve as much as possible I made a mistake and did not look around at the end of the race to ensure I had enough lead to win the heat, and I was passed by two competitors at the finish. I ended up not finishing as an automatic qualifier to the semi-finals, so I had to wait to qualify on a time basis. This caused people to cast further doubt and criticise. Their comments, however, didn’t compare to those I levelled at myself. I remember silently sitting and waiting with my coach to find out if I had qualified for the semi-final, choking on my disappointment in myself.
Once the results came up and I had made it to the semi-final, I still said nothing to anyone, not even to the media. I couldn’t wait for that semi-final. In that race I put it all together and ran faster than the personal best times of any of the competitors in the entire World Championship field. And I wasn’t even healthy. Tyree Washington, one of my US competitors who was a new and up-and-coming athlete, had made some comments after my quarter-final that he didn’t think I had the competitiveness or the drive any more and that it was over for me. When asked about that comment, I just said, ‘I have nothing to say, only a race to run. I’m happy that Tyree has made the final so that he can be in it when I win it!’
When the final started, I felt confident that I could win, even though I knew it would be tough because I wasn’t 100 per cent healthy or 100 per cent fit. When the gun went off, I tried to balance my race between careful execution and being competitive. At 200 metres I was in very good shape, but at 200 metres you start to make a move and start to run a little bit more aggressively. That’s when I began to feel the injury and the soreness began to creep up in my quadriceps. I kept running regardless. At about 270 metres into the race, the inside of my leg near my groin felt as if I had pulled a muscle. Just as I was starting to slow down because I thought the race was over for me, I felt the pain release and let go. So I started running again. No longer in contention for first place, I was back in the second half of the field by this point. With 120 metres to go, I was probably in about sixth place. If there was ever a time to quit this was it. But I never even thought about quitting; it was not an option. The only thing I thought – and it was instinctive – was, ‘I’m not injured. I can still run, so run.’ And run I did. I put myself back into the race, passed the other athletes and ran away from them, finishing first and winning the gold medal.
To this day, that is one of the races I am most proud of, because of the competitiveness I showed and because I proved to the world that I was still the competitor that I had shown myself to be over the preceding six years. Even after that, I still wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt. For example, in 1998, when I pulled out of the 200 metres at the US championships because of an injury, the media hypothesised that I was ducking Maurice Greene – who not only hadn’t ever beaten me in the 200 metres, but who had never run anything close to what I had run. It was crazy.
At the same time, I was also criticised for not being friendly enough, funny enough or dynamic enough. This all came at a time when track athletes had started to call themselves entertainers. Long before Usain Bolt started clowning around, it had become common for the sprinters, especially in the 100 metres, to ‘put on a show’ as they called it at the start. Most of the sprinters saw their moment of opportunity to make themselves known or enhance their celebrity. So during the introductions before the race they would scream and yell, make funny faces, and do whatever other silly things they could to try to make the crowd laugh. Since many of the 100-metre sprinters are also 200-metre sprinters, some of this silliness found its way over to the 200 metres.
That wasn’t something I was about to indulge in. Some of the athletes said that these antics helped them to relax before the race, but I didn’t want to be relaxed at the starting line. Unlike many of my opponents, who I believe wanted to lessen the pressure of competition by pretending that this wasn’t an important moment, I wanted to feel the pressure and run under the pressure of meeting the goals I had set for myself. Besides, the crowd had come to see a great race and to see me run fast.
By comparison to other sprinters, which the media didn’t hold back on, I came across as stoic and too serious. But I didn’t want to be an entertainer. I wanted to be a competitor and a winner. Somehow I was getting criticism for doing exactly what I was being paid record appearance fees to do.
The fact is that most people didn’t really know me during those days, which is probably mostly my fault because I didn’t let people see much of my personality. I was always a really private person, so I never allowed reporters and camera crews to get a look at the spontaneous everyday natural life of Michael.
MY MEDIA ICON
Muhammad Ali, one of my heroes, eventually provided me with a model when it came to dealing with the media. In 1995 I had taken a media-training course provided by one of my sponsors, during which we were shown some of his press conferences. The confidence he had and his ability to control the media were incredible to me. I wanted to be like him.
Up to that point I’d known Muhammad Ali just as one of the greatest boxers of all time. I had watched him fight on television a couple of times when I was kid, and my entire family and I rooted for him. The first time I ever felt sad about a sports event was when he lost one of those matches.
Despite those feelings, when I saw videos of Ali’s press conferences in my media-training course, at first I just saw him as a trash talker. Then I started to get what he was doing. He not only controlled the media by just talking a lot, he showed incredible ability to make people laugh and ask questions about the topic he wanted to talk about. He was so funny, quick and witty. It was incredible to see.
I knew my personality wasn’t even close to his and that I could never pull off interviews the brilliant way he did. So I developed my own ways of controlling the media that, ironically, I would later become a part of. I simply orchestrated events in which they could participate.
Of course, life in the limelight did have its perks. Becoming a celebrity has allowed me to be financially successful and live out some dreams. It has also provided the opportunity for me to influence the lives of many less fortunate people. I have supported a school in Oakland, California, for the last ten years, which provides a high-quality education to kids who come from a background of poverty and drugs, and really have no reason to be hopeful. Not only do I get the chance as a celebrity to talk to and influence these kids, but every year we have an auction to raise money for better facilities, teachers and supplies. I volunteer to appear at a cocktail party for the highest bidder and twenty of his friends or family. Last year I raised close to $100,000 for the school just by being a celebrity willing to spend time talking to people at a cocktail party!
I even got to meet the man who had helped me deal with the media. After watching Ali on that video I was mesmerised and wanted to know more. I started to read about him and discovered he was not only a great boxer, but a man who stood up for what he believed, stood up against authority when he believed authority was wrong, and was willing to sacrifice his career for what he believed. He became a Muslim, and although people thought he would change back, to this day he has not.
When I went to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, I watched him light the torch at the Opening Ceremony. I was in the stadium and there had been great anticipation as to who would light the cauldron. Then Ali appeared and did the job, shaking the whole time from Parkinson’s disease. It was an incredible thing to witness.
Later during the Games I attended a basketball game between the US and another country; at half time Muhammad Ali was presented with a gold medal from when he boxed in the Olympics in 1960. I was there for that as well. I watched the faces of the basketball players as they got a chance to meet him and I thought, ‘That would be incredible.’
After I made history by winning gold in both the 200 and 400 metres, I was told by my agent, Brad Hunt, that Muhammad Ali wanted to meet me. I was floored! I thought Brad was kidding. The meeting was set up at the Atlanta hotel where Ali was staying, the Ritz Carlton. I was invited to his suite, where he greeted me with his wife and her sister. We talked for about five minutes and then he started telling me jokes. ‘My wife’s sister likes you,’ he quipped.
We developed a friendship from there and I would see him at many other events. He wrote the foreword to my book, Slaying the Dragon, and he also came to my charity golf tournament to help raise money for kids with disabilities – he has always been generous with his time. He has the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Foundation, which supports Parkinson’s research through an annual fundraiser. I attend that event any year that I can, and it is always good to see him. And while he has gotten progressively worse with the Parkinson’s, he retains the wit he always displayed and continues to inspire me today. But then, I’ve been lucky when it comes to inspirations in my life and my career.