9201290789
DETROIT FREE PRESS
920807
Friday, August 07, 1992
METRO FINAL
1D
Photo Color RUSTY KENNEDY Associated Press
S:
Gail Devers of the United States can't quite clear the last
hurdle Thursday and stumbles home fifth in the women's 100.
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1992, Detroit Free Press
DEVERS FALLS, AND THEN THE OTHER GLASS SLIPPER DROPS
BARCELONA, Spain -- So here came Gail Devers, flying over the final
hurdle of her Olympic race, cheeks puffing, nothing but open track and a
finish line ahead of her. This should have been the end of a Cinderella
story. She clears that hurdle and runs straight into America's living room,
the hero of the Games, two gold medals for the woman who almost had her feet
amputated.
The end of a Cinderella story. But Gail Devers did not clear that last
hurdle. She hit it with her lead leg, knocked it over with a clang, tripped
and stumbled one, two, three, four, five steps before falling to the track,
then crawling the last few inches, hearing a gasp from the crowd as a thunder
of feet passed her to the tape.
"All I could think of was, 'Stay up, stay up,' " Devers would say. "And
after I fell, all I could think of was, 'Crawl, crawl . . .' "
Cinderella on her hands and knees.
And the story was just beginning.
Torrence, the accuser
Down in the basement of Estadi Olimpic, just minutes before that
100-meter hurdles race, Gwen Torrence sat with a gold medal around her neck,
facing several hundred reporters. She had just won the 200, a fine
accomplishment. But last week, she had lost to Gail Devers and others in the
100. Then she accused two of the higher finishers of using drugs. A hurricane
of controversy blew up.
Now she was talking again.
"Drugs are everywhere at these Olympics," she said. "People just don't
want to believe it. In swimming, in track and field. They're everywhere.
"I know I stepped on a lot of toes with what I said. Nobody wants to speak
up. But I spoke up, and it's too late to take it back."
As reporters scribbled, a woman sitting next to Torrence, Jamaica's Juliet
Cuthbert, squirmed in her seat. A silver medalist in the 200, she was one of
the women who beat Torrence in the 100 -- one of the accused, in other words.
And she was angry. Finally, she turned to Torrence with a scowl.
"You can't just make accusations without proof, Gwen. How would you like
it if I came out and accused you of being on drugs?
"Do you know when I called home after (the 100) the second question my
mother asked me -- the second question! -- was 'Are you using drugs?' My
mother. I went from a high to a low."
Torrence straightened. She spoke into the microphone. "I didn't mean
Juliet," she said.
A reporter asked whom she meant?
"No comment."
The reporter asked Juliet if Torrence had mentioned names to her.
"Yes."
Who?
"Irina Privalova . . . and Gail."
Gail Devers?
A remarkable comeback
Back upstairs, Gail Devers had risen and was limping slightly toward the
tunnel. She looked at the scoreboard and saw that she had finished fifth. What
a sad end this was to a remarkable comeback. Eighteen months ago, suffering
from Graves disease, Devers was barely able to walk. Her feet swelled. They
ached constantly. She would wear five pairs of socks and extra large shoes and
shuffle around a track until those feet were so bloody she had to cut the
socks off. A doctor finally ordered her to stay in bed for several months, and
she became so helpless her parents had to carry her to the bathroom.
She recovered -- "a miracle," she calls it -- and surprised everyone when
she qualified for these Olympics two months ago. Then, to what should have
been the sound of violins, she snagged the gold medal in the 100 last
Saturday, a race that is not even her speciality.
"I guess she surprised you twice," her coach, Bob Kersee, said grimly
after her fall. "Gail was supposed to win this race and not medal in the 100.
Instead she won the 100 and didn't medal here."
True. But that was not the surprise. The surprise was that a member of her
own team was downstairs, right now, accusing her of using drugs.
The whispers are everywhere
"They should shoot us with a blood test right here," Gwen Torrence was
saying. "Then you'd see who's clean."
Cuthbert was now agreeing with her. "Yeah. Blood tests go back further
than urine tests."
Torrence: "I hate needles, but I'd take a blood test right now."
Cuthbert: "Me, too."
Torrence: "I know people don't want to hear this, but Carl Lewis
complained about (steroids) four years ago, and everything he said turned out
to be true."
Cuthbert: "I go into competitions thinking only 90 percent of us are
clean."
Torrence: "I'm not a sore loser, but I don't like losing unfairly."
Cuthbert: "Everyone is suspect."
Torrence: "Everyone is suspect."
This is the other side of track and field -- maybe the part NBC doesn't
want to show, because it's negative and hurts ratings.
But it is sadly undeniable. And it is everywhere. As soon as someone wins
big around the Olympics, someone else starts whispering. Especially if that
winner has been away from competition for a while -- "You know, in hiding, or
just coming out for a big race," Cuthbert said.
Like Devers?
And finally, here she came, down to the interview area, just minutes
after Torrence and Cuthbert had gone. Devers was asked about the fall. She was
asked about her feelings. Then she was asked about drugs.
Her coach, Kersee, interrupted. "Why are we answering these questions?
You know, I wanted to come in here and ask Gwen my own question. I wanted to
ask her for proof. She has no proof! I am so upset that Gail and other
athletes have to defend themselves against these charges!
"You shouldn't be allowed to make accusations. Either name names or don't
say anything! Gail and none of my athletes have ever failed a drug test. So
why do they allow someone to slander us? Where is the proof?"
Happy endings? Not anymore
Where is the proof? There is none. The fact is, even those athletes who
use drugs -- and there are many -- have found chemists smart enough to hide
those drugs from the testing procedure. So there is no proof. Not for
innocence. Not for guilt. You have a world full of suspicion, conspiracies,
finger-pointing.
And it ruins everything. What a shame that Devers, whom America has come
to love this past week, should have to endure such whispers, especially after
her heartbreaking finish in Thursday night's race. Can't Torrence let a good
story be? How dare she stir such negative gossip?
And yet, sometimes the truth is negative. Ben Johnson beating Carl Lewis
in Seoul was a wonderful story until it turned out to be bogus. The East
Germans, who always screamed at rumors of steroids and blood doping, were a
great story -- until the truth came out: They were lying.
Bob Kersee's athletes have come under suspicion before: In 1988, his
prize pupil, Florence Griffith Joyner, ran some unbelievable races. Earned her
gold medals. But she had never been that dominant before, and her muscles
looked overdeveloped. She also conveniently disappeared after those Olympics,
when drug testing increased. Many insiders, to this day, swear that FloJo was
on the juice.
So what do you do? Tell people to shut up? Tell them "don't bring us no
bad news." Let us say -- for the sake of argument -- that Torrence is right.
Devers did use drugs. What should Torrence do? She can never prove anything
if the tests come up negative. And if she names Devers, she can be sued for
libel. So, should she simply lose and keep her mouth shut? Or speak up and
call attention to the problem?
In a world without trust, there are no rules sacred. So Torrence went
home Thursday with venom on her tongue, and Kersee went home with his blood
vessels popping, and Gail Devers went home, an ice pack on her shoulder,
somewhere between heroic upset, and outright confused. This should have been a
Cinderella story. But Cinderella doesn't live here anymore.
MAJOR STORY; BIOGRAPHY; GAIL DEVERS; RUNNER; OLYMPICS; RESULT