PHELPS' GLORY - Brough Scott
BROUGH SCOTT
COPY FOR PETER MITCHELL
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, SPORT
PHELPS SATURDAY
Not just too close to call, too tight to touch. With fifty, twenty, ten, five, two, one metres to go, Michael Phelps could not peg back the speeding Milorad Cavic to win this 100 Metre Butterfly Final and his place alongside Mark Spitz in Seven Olympic Gold immortality. But he did. Only he will know why.
History, and the wonders of electronic sensory timing equipment, will state that he beat the feisty Californian based Cadic by just one hundredth of a second. Replays seemed to show that the Serbian’s fingers were actually on the wall first but it was Phelps who beat him to apply pressure. It was something else too. It was as great a display of will to win as this Olympics or any Olympics will ever see.
Forget all the statistics. Forget even that the Serbian team were at first inclined to protest and that Cadic, despite being smilingly gracious in defeat, said “if we raced again, I would win it”, the real story here is that reports of Phelps being superhuman are an insult to him. He may have developed an astonishing physique, huge powers of concentration and an almost dolphin like technique, but he bleeds all right. At the 50 metre mark yesterday morning, a full six tenths of a second down on Cadic and lagging seventh of the eight finalists, it looked as if he was to face the full haemorrhage of defeat.
In the high, wide, and wonderful blue vastness of Beijing’s “Water Cube” swimming complex, there was a throat gripping sensation that all our Olympics had led to this. From the first time that Michael Phelps had marched out for the final of the Individual Medley on Sunday, we could not keep our eyes off him. The strange white dressing gown, the trance-like look, the ritual towelling down of his starting block, the sinking stretch of first one long leg then the other, the final disrobing of those 6 foot 4 inches and 14 stones of hard sculpted muscle, and then the moment when he shakes that 6 foot 7 wingspan long and loose below him ready to plunge into the element he has made his own. We had seen it four, five, six times. But now the enormity of the seventh was upon us.
And not lost upon Cradic. He was in lane 4. He was even bigger and taller than Phelps. He had clocked a faster time in the semi final and as Phelps stood flexing his thigh downwards with one huge foot on his starting block Cadic turned towards him to do exactly the same. The two dark-goggled figures stared at each other, two testosterone fuelled amphibians about to battle it out in the water. High up in the stadium we held our breath.
Right away we could see it was going to be difficult. Once he surfaced from his dive Phelps was clearly being outpointed by the Serbian beside him. Michael was working with his normal intensity but his whirling arms had no more bite, rather less, than the others. As he came to the wall we could see that he was even more down than he had been in the semis. When he surfaced from the turn, he was a full length behind Cradic. In all sports, a huge collective gasp comes up when the realisation once again dawns that mortality will always have its man. Surely it had Phelps now.
It was impossible but he would not accept it. Deep inside a true champion there is a will that refuses to accept defeat. It is why he does the early mornings, the impossible training sessions, the carbo-loaded diet, the unrelenting routine, the feeling that without winning there cannot be air to breath or eyes to see. You see it with them all, just as much with Nadal in tennis as with McCoy in the racing game. In press conferences and again yesterday morning Phelps has smiled and spoken serenely of noble things like “taking the sport of swimming to where I would like it to be.” But right at the core he is a champion because he has an ingrained rage against the possibility of defeat.
Up out of the water it screamed at us now. He was closing but Cradic would not weaken, Phelps wasn’t closing fast enough. His whole being arched and stretched in the water but he was still almost half a body length behind as they went under the 5 metre wire. It had to be Cradic, but with one last titanic thrust Phelps asked the ultimate question. He turned and could see the numbers 50.58 and 50.59 up on the scoreboard. He pulled his goggles down to check his number was at the lesser one. Then the roar raged out.
When he finally came through from the poolside with the last drops drying off the torso that has sent middle aged men world-wide back to stomach crunches every morning, he was still fired up enough to give very direct answers to the question. No flannelling about records or sporting legacies, no stooping to cheap jokes about rivals. “It just shows,” he said as with suitable symbolism the cheers mounted behind him for Becky Aldington’s miracle on the water,, “it just shows that if you put your mind to something and really focus, anything is possible.”
What Michael Phelps did last week has defined this Olympics. But his records will be matched, his marks will be passed, what matters more is the impression he left when it looked as if the “Seven Golds” ambition was beyond his reach. That is the one Olympic dream that should never die.
USAIN BOLT - Brough Scott
BROUGH SCOTT
COPY FOR PETER MITCHELL
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH SPORT
USAIN BOLT
Yesterday Usain Bolt was modesty itself. Dutifully attending a sponsor’s briefing in a shopping in downtown Beijing he opined “I wouldn’t say I was a phenomenon. I would just say I was a great athlete.” So that’s it then?After seeing him last week the words are not enough.
The second time was a bit easier on the brain, the first was just too much for the eyes to take. Usain Bolt at full gallop in the stadium – who could ever think you could write the phrase “forget Michael Phelps” - but the Jamaican’s record breaking 100 and 200 metres were the defining images of Beijing 2008.
The 100 metres last Saturday was the most extraordinary individual piece of athleticism that I ever expect to see. Positioned half way down the track there didn’t seem to be much difference between the runners for the first few metres and then suddenly Bolt appeared to be in an entirely different gear. In a few mighty strides he had left the world’s best trailing in his wake and then freewheeled in waving to the crowd. You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
In view of sprinting’s rancid recent image the first instinct was to not believe him. To break a world record that easily suggested chemical manipulations that would end in tears. The Games most iconic image would at once, like that of Ben Jonson in Seoul, become its most infamous too. If that proved to be true the very future of athletics itself would be in question. It was with heavy hearts that we went down to the chaotic sweaty scrum that is the mixed zone through which athletes have to thread to get to the dressing room .
With no Usain in sight, there was a huddle round a elderly silver haired man in a green Jamaica shirt. The name on his laminated pass was Dr Herb Elliott but from the sound of his voice it was fairly evident that he was no relation to Australia’s greatest ever runner who was 70 this February. But this Herb was obviously taking the flak head on. “Suspicious,” he was saying in ringing Caribbean tones, “ They might say it is suspicious and maybe I say to them come and see our programme , come down and see our testing , come down and see we operate , anytime day or night. We have nothing to hide.”
Dr Elliott, who was an athlete before studying abroad and coming back to be part of the Jamaican set up, then related how he had first seen the young Usain as a lanky but brilliant 13 year old burning up the grass at his local town of Trelawny, how we should remember that he ran a 19.93 second 200 metres to win the World Junior (Under 19) championships when still only 15. Dr Herb told how athletics and sprinting were a true national sport in Jamaica and even explained that as a sprinter hits top speed after 40 metres the end is “and optical illusion” everyone is slowing down. “Check the bio-mechanics,” he said, “this boy can just run fast.”
The old boy was a fairly convincing witness but he was as nothing compared to the man himself - on the track and off it. In the 200 he was all business. Usain Bolt knew the comparison was with Michael Johnson and every stride he took showed how anxious he was to make it. I will never forget Johnson rocketed off the bend at Atlanta at what seemed impossible speed and the absolute wonder when the world record figures 19.32 flashed up on the screen. Now Usain was out and after him. Not a trace of showboating as those long legs re-wrote the record books and when we looked to the screen it seemed only right that it should, at 19.30, be under the Johnson time.
Downstairs it was even more chaotic than before. This time the huddle was around Bertrand Cameron the Jamaican 400 metre coach. “I first saw Usain when he was 12 running 52 flat for 400 metres on the grass,” said the moustachioed Bertrand, “he just loved to run. He is never going to leave Jamaica. He loves his country and we will make him a national hero. He is setting an example to young children that there is something different from crime. And we don’t worry about Bolt and drugs. No sir – not at all – he don’t even take no supple – ments.”
Then, as again on Friday, it was into the press conference and Usain came through hugely tall but with a power in the thighs which made him anything but a weak quartered giraffe. He made his now customary laid back jokes about sleeping and eating nuggets. Then in his well modulated English he went serious, “I have always loved the 200 metres,” he said, “ I wanted to go for this record , I blew my mind and I blew the world’s mind.”
In one week Usain Bolt has become the most magnetically exciting sportsman on the planet. “When he was 15,” Bertrand Cameron had told us on Thursday, “ we said he would be the saviour of track and field.” We must hope that this prophecy has come true.
ROWING FOUR - Brough Scott
BROUGH SCOTT
COPY FOR PETER MITCHELL
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, SPORT
Inspiration on the rowing lake. It happened in Athens in the very last stroke and at 1500 metres at Beijing’s extravagantly built Shunyi Centre and a whole length down on a rampant Australian crew, Britain’s Mens Four of Tom James, Steve Williams, Peter Reed and Andy Hodge needed a final 500 which would make even the watching and Redgrave and Pinsent wince. Now Tom James, Peter Reed and Andy Hodge have gold medals too and Steve Williams is into the double club.
At line they were a decisive three quarters of a length, 1.28 seconds in front of the Australians with the French another second and a half back in third. So in those closing, sun-scorched, oar heaving 500 metres the British four had taken almost three seconds out of the Australians, an achievement which master coach Jurgen Grobler later described as the best finish of all his crews. A high accolade, but goodness they had to earn it. “It was a bit ugly,” said Steve Williams who had lain back, utterly spent, into Tom James lap at the finish, “the emotions are sending messages to the muscles but it becomes beyond skills. It is like flying blind – something primeval.”
To follow where Redgrave, Pinsent, and Cracknell have been and make this a third consecutive Olympic Gold for Britain’s Four was always going to be a tall order and all of this crew confessed to serious nerves before the start. “One moment I was calm and back in Caversham,” said Andy Hodge, “the next it was panic and head in the clouds. Some of it was horrible.”
For watchers the opening quarter of this straight wide 2000 metre course was reasonably without worries. GB who had been the most impressive of all the semi finalists began well enough from their number four berth going through the first 500 just 0.2 seconds behind the Australians. But grandstands, especially especially designed new ones, are easy places for expectation. On the lake the Australians were extending things. At the 1,000 metre mark GB were more than a full second adrift and the Slovenians had edged them back into third.
Then in the third quarter it had got worse. That full length behind the Australians and a growing concern that this was not to be, that the much interrupted preparation which had only seen the British four finally come together six weeks ago might be showing up, that history was too heavy a load. “At 500 I could see the stern of the Australian boat,” said Andy Hodge, “and I knew that we had to keep our heads and bring out the final gear but it shocked the hell out of me that we had it like that. I remember really vividly thinking with 250 metres to go that we might not get this, then I though actually I want that medal. I will die happy now and The Four Horsemen can rain down any day they want. “
Watching a rowing finish when your boat is closing is a strangely agonizing experience as the craft move comparatively slowly despite all the efforts being spent. But when you realize that your crew have the momentum, the belief and joy rise to the most unbelievably thrilling of crescendoes. We could see that GB had the bite on the Australians. They began to close. They drew level. You looked for the line but quite gloriously you realised they were going to make it. Then they were through and the swinging animal of the boat was suddenly just four broken men slumped on the water line.
“We really paid for that with our souls,” said Steve Williams afterwards. “Athens was an epic journey but this has topped it. All of us have had back injuries in the last twelve months and there have been many low moments but if anything it has pulled the four of us together. That and Jurgen’s belief in us. He has been the most massive inspiration and last night said ‘there is no magic speech, the magic is what you have done in these last four years.’”
The man who masterminded Redgrave and Pinsent in the glory years looked on with a deep golden smile of satisfaction. “In those last hundred metres” he said the German still strong in his voice despite all those years in Henley “there has to be a huge brain still sending a signal and not letting things go even if it is going into darkness. You have got to hold the crew together , stay together. That’s the main message.
For Grobler there was another happiness. “Everyone asked what would happen after we lost the great heroes, (Redgrave and Pinsent) whether this would be the end of men’s rowing. Today showed that it hasn’t.”