ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 3, 1996 TAG: 9608050026
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Our Eyes in Atlanta
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
note: above
MICHAEL JOHNSON STOLE THE SHOW from Dan O'Brien, but they both came out winners.
It was about an hour until the moment for which Dan O'Brien had waited four years, longer really.
So, where was everyone going? To Richard Jewell's apartment? To the ballpark next door to see Japan doing a number on the U.S. in baseball?
Olympic Stadium was packed as it had never been before, and O'Brien needed not much more than to just finish the 1,500-run and he would be what so many Americans had been before, but none had been for two decades.
His moment, like so many of the events in his athletic smorgasbord, the decathlon, was reduced to a sideshow. O'Brien's U.S. teammate, Michael Johnson, had done something no man had done before.
Trying to become the ``world's greatest athlete'' doesn't have the glamour it once did. That doesn't make it any easier.
Johnson ran the 200 meters in an astounding world-record 19.32 seconds. The fans watched the replay on the stadium video board, and then many of the 82,844 headed for the exits.
Noncompeting athletes headed for their buses. Writers typed furiously, trying to make deadlines with the speed of Johnson. Other fans seemed to want to beat the nightly gridlock leaving the venue.
O'Brien had been given up before, as an infant, by his Finnish birth mother and black father. He was adopted then by the O'Briens of a couple in Oregon. Until Johnson's laser show, he was the object of much of the stadium's affections.
No dummy, he was wearing an Atlanta Braves cap between events.
O'Brien didn't notice the exodus, some of which was his own doing. He was the favorite, and he was leading somewhat comfortably.
``To win the gold, all I needed to do was hang on,'' O'Brien said.
Even if some of the crowd didn't.
He had built a 124-point lead through Wednesday's first five events, not as big a margin as in the past, but sufficient.
He had soared over his demon of from four years ago at the Olympic Trials, the pole vault. Not long before Johnson ran more than 23 mph for his second gold medal of the games, O'Brien made the best javelin throw of his life.
The 1,500, the last of the decathlon's 10 events, is O'Brien's worst. He needed to stay within 32 seconds of Germany's Frank Busemann - only 21 and destined to dominate this sport for years - to win.
We are taken with the spectacular, not the consistent. The 200 excites us. The 1,500, or even the decathlon, takes staying power. We are a people in a hurry, like Johnson.
O'Brien didn't have to hurry. He didn't. He had a 209-point lead after the javelin. He lost the 1,500, but was only 14.48 seconds behind Busemann. His total of 8,824 points won by 118.
Although he didn't reach his world's record (8,891) and the total was just the third-best of his career, his gap-toothed smile said it was enough, long before a gold medal was draped around his neck.
``It's probably been the hardest two days of my life,'' O'Brien said. ``I've thought about this every day for four years.''
Two weeks after his 30th birthday, O'Brien had the hardest two days of his life. An orphan. A youth whose favorite events were once pot and booze. A kid who was booted from college in Idaho. A man with a DUI.
Is it any wonder he wasn't going to allow those ``Dan & Dave'' commercials of four years ago and his ``no-height'' failure in the Olympic Trials in New Orleans define his life?
O'Brien already was the world's best decathlete before the Atlanta Games. He had taken away two-time Olympic champion Daley Thompson's world record; but in America, unless you do it in the Olympics, it doesn't seem to count.
So, in his first Olympics, ``I fought all day to forget it was an Olympic Games,'' O'Brien said. ``When I thought about it being the Olympics, it was just overwhelming.
``By midday the first day, I'm just trying to think, `This is another decathlon. This is another decathlon. Just get through it, and you'll be fine.'''
Getting through is what the decathlon is about. The Olympic motto, ``Citius, Altius, Fortius,'' is Latin for ``Faster, Higher, Braver,'' but is universally accepted to mean ``Swifter, Higher, Stronger.''
The decathlon is about the last of those. O'Brien won only one of the 10 events, the 400 meters that wrapped up Wednesday's start. That doesn't mean it was downhill from there.
When Jim Thorpe won the first Olympic decathlon at the 1912 Games in Stockholm, King Gustav of Sweden, presenting the later-stripped, then-restored medal, said, ``You, sir, are the world's greatest athlete.''
Thorpe was the first of 11 Americans to earn that designation that goes with the decathlon gold. The most familiar names are Bob Mathias, Rafer Johnson, Bill Toomey and Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Montreal gold medalist, the last U.S. decathlete to win before O'Brien.
And how would he describe the experience?
``I'm tired,'' he said. ``I'm numb.''
When he awoke Friday morning, O'Brien saw Johnson's triumph heralded by a huge color photo and a war-typed ``WHOOOOOOSH!'' on the front page of the Olympics section in the Atlanta newspaper.
O'Brien's gold was chronicled on Page 16.
Even when you're the world's greatest athlete, the decathlon is a struggle.
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Michael Johnson (left) and Dan O'Brien congratulateby CNBeach other Thursday on their gold medal wins at the Olympics in
Atlanta. color