ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, July 29, 1996 TAG: 9607290068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Our Eyes In Atlanta
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
NOTE: Below
RECORDS SET during track events help distract attention from the Olympic Park bombing.
It took only 21 seconds.
Really, it was less than that, 20.78 seconds to be exact.
It took only that long for the Atlanta Games to feel better about itself.
It happened Saturday night at the new - and packed - Olympic Stadium. In the first Games, 100 years ago in Greece, the 100-meter dash was the first event. This time, it was the most needed one.
And in back-to-back 100s - one straightaway down the track - these Games were transported from tragedy at Centennial Olympic Park 20 hours earlier to not one, but two, moments that were worth the anticipation.
You may find sports down one of the aisles in the toy department of life, but what it can do is make you feel better about real life, even if it isn't really better.
Sports is great at diversionary tactics.
So, when the public address announcer at the stadium asked for quiet for the start of the women's, and then men's, 100s, the 82,000 who filled the seats grew so silent you'd have thought the man said he was going to announce the name of the park bomb suspect.
The runners were accompanied on their trips by thousands of points of light, the popping camera flashes like stars above at least twinkling again on one part of the Games.
One race took a seeming eternity to start. The other took a while to officially end. And they weren't the only unforgettable performances on this night.
Gail Devers repeated as an Olympic champion. She not only joined Wyomia Tyus as the only Olympian women to repeat in the 100, Devers also joined her housemate, triple jumper Kenny Harrison, in the parade to the gold-medal stand.
Harrison set an Olympic record. Donovan Bailey went him one better. Bailey was born in Jamaica, lives in Canada and trains in the U.S., but as he crossed the finish line, eyes and mouth open wide, he was running on a different planet.
"Oh God, that was my time?'' Bailey wondered.
Yes, 9.84 seconds. No human being has ever run so far so fast, not even Ben Johnson on steroids in Seoul eight years ago.
The only place that they were going faster in these parts this weekend was Talladega. Maybe Bailey couldn't believe the clocks because it took the race so long to get out of the blocks.
False start. False start. False start. Bailey was off slow. His reaction time out of the blocks was a turtlelike 0.174 second. Legal is 0.100. Anything less is a false start, as defending Olympic champ Linford Christie of Great Britain learned twice.
The U.S. duo of Dennis Mitchell and Michael Marsh started well but finished so far out of it you'd have thought this was men's field hockey.
It was the first time the United States failed to medal in this race since the 1980 Moscow Games, when the red, white and blue stayed home.
It is Bailey's time that will be remembered. It was Devers' race that will go into the memory bank.
On this night, she did it in 10.94 seconds. Merlene Ottey of Jamaica had the same time. Gwen Torrance, on a quick run through her neighborhood, did a 10.96.
It was closer than that. It was closer than the incredible length of Devers' fingernails. She may have won by the head of the pin that fastened her number of her jersey.
Ottey said if Devers won, it was probably by a hair - really. Officially, Devers beat Ottey by less than 1/100th of a second. The Jamaican protested, saying Devers won when her head dipped at the finish.
"It's the torso that must finish first,'' said Ottey.
On this night, it definitely wasn't the tortoise.
The men followed with their stutter-stepping. If they started in controversy, they ended that way, too.
Christie, after standing shirtless in the tunnel following his disqualification for two false starts, came onto the track after Bailey's record and took a victory lap.
It wasn't very British.
"This was the most unprofessional race I've been in in my life,'' Mitchell said.
It also was the fastest.
Bailey's world record, Harrison's Olympic jump in beating world-record holder Jonathan Edwards of Britain and Devers' heady performance reminded some longtime Olympic watchers of the night in October 1968 in Mexico City when Bob Beamon made his incredible long jump into indelible Olympic memory, and Lee Evans set a world mark in the 400 meters.
Whether or not it matched that night, it was just what these Olympics needed. After one very unforgettable start to the day, Atlanta got more than one unforgettable finish.
Let's hope it wasn't just a fleeting moment.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Spectators watch the third day of events throughby CNBholes cut in an American flag at the 1996 Olympic Games. color.