The Small World of Competitive Sports

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We sometimes forget what a small world we live in. And no, this isn’t another tale of bumping into your next-door neighbor in Tahiti. I’m talking about our world: that of competitors, whatever our sports may be.

I've noticed this before but never more strongly than last month at the U.S. Olympic Team track and field trials.

Not all of my friends had been excited when I told them I was going. "No way," one acquaintance said. "I don't like crowds." 

But even with a record 20,974 crammed into Eugene's Hayward Field, it was only a few minutes before I lost that sense of being just one in a herd. Admittedly, as a journalist, I had special privileges. Before the meet was over, I'd be shoving a voice recorder under Tyson Gay's chin (he has a very soft voice) and joining scrums of other reporters around media-darling athletes as they exited the field. But in addition to the famous, there were 1,000 other athletes there. That meant that of those 20,974 people, nearly one in 20 is an athlete - an athlete good enough to have made the Olympic Trials. At least as many more in attendance were related to athletes.

The first person I met was a fellow journalist - no surprise because we'd both chosen to spend the evening in the part of the stands closest to the media tent. The interesting bit was that she was from my own one-time club in Minnesota. Runners obviously have a lot in common. But so do Minnesotans and Oregonians: namely, that we each live in climates the rest of the nation views with horror. We respond by cultivating a sense of weather macho. "The chill factor was only 30 degrees; I had two-inch icicles in my beard; but it was a good run." Or, "I prefer running in rain. It keeps you cool." (Believe it or not, the rest of the nation doesn't think that way.)

Another woman sitting near me had once run a 53-second 400. Behind me was the mother of a top contender in the men's 800. "Go baby, go!" she shouted as he zoomed by in the qualifying heat, en route to an easy pass to the next round. 

In subsequent days, I'd find myself trying to puzzle out the fine points of the triple jump with a woman who made it through two rounds of the 100-meter dash, meet one of the top-seeded men's hurdlers, and discover that the middle-aged man behind me was none other than Willie Gault, 1980 Olympic Team member and Superbowl-winning wide receiver.

But there's something about being at Hayward Field that makes you want to run, not just sit. So one morning, I joined an organized group for a lap of Pre's Trail: 4.1 miles of wood chips on a route favored by Steve Prefontaine.

A friend had told me it started at "the Duck Pond," but the map showed multiple ponds and no ducks, and at the prescribed time, I found myself at the wrong pond. Another runner had made the same mistake, and after a companionable, if brisk, run to the proper pond, I learned that she was a coach from North Dakota. The previous day, one of her runners, a high school sophomore, had become a media star when she made it through the first round of the women's 800 with the day's fifth-best time.

What I was discovering was that it was nearly impossible to not meet people with interesting connections. Later, doing a second, solo lap of Pre's Trail, I was pretty sure a woman I saw going the opposite direction was someone I'd watched in the 10,000. A friend of mine wound up doing his morning workout with Joan Samuelson.

Being in such a setting is a bit like a junior high school dance. If you're shy, it's like having all the boys lined up on one side of the room and all the girls on the other. But the stands, the festival grounds, and Pre's Trail (if you can keep up) aren't junior high. Mothers, coaches, and Minnesotans are ordinary people. So are a lot of athletes on their free days. Not to mention the race officials and volunteers. And we're all there for the same basic reason.

Meeting Willie Gault was pure luck. Meeting other interesting people - that's unavoidable. And it's not just an Olympic Trials experience. At any race you'll discover those small-world interconnections. Because our sports, whatever they are, really are small worlds.

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