‘They might suggest you drop out of one of the individual events instead.’
‘The four hundred, I suppose. They could suggest it, but I wouldn’t back down for anything. I mean, I had to fight for that place, all the way up that home stretch. Okay, maybe I only got third because I have a better chest measurement than Janie Canute, maybe Janie was shook up from her fall, but the fact is that the photo showed me ahead of her.’
Some of this was news to Dryden. ‘She had a fall, you say?’
‘I heard some talk of it,’ said Goldine vaguely. ‘She stumbled on the hostel steps, I understand.’
‘Tough,’ said Dryden. ‘So that was why she couldn’t go faster in the Final.’ Before he got the words out, he was cursing himself for being so tactless. His voice trailed away in embarrassment.
Goldine propped herself on her elbows, eyes burning. ‘Tough for her? How do you think I felt, getting beat by two girls I could have run off their feet if I hadn’t caught this bug? I know people are saying I tried too many events, I should stand down and give Canute a run in Moscow, but, hell, she can run in the relay team. I’m not giving up my place to anyone.’ The bedsprings rattled as she thrust her head back on the pillow.
‘Why should you, indeed?’ said Dryden quickly. ‘After all the training you put in. It sounds to me as if Canute was looking for an alibi.’
He expected her to latch on to this, but she spurned it.
‘What the hell — it’s all history. The fact is that I took third place. I’m thinking of Moscow now, what I have to do there. You have to be single-minded if you aim to excel in sports.’
‘Or anything else,’ said Dryden.
‘This has been good for me,’ she continued. ‘Out on that track, I was coming to terms with myself. There was a moment in that four hundred when I realised the first two girls had got away, and I was fighting for the last place on the team. I was in desperate trouble, but I had a fantastic sensation of power. Not in my legs; they were dragging. In my head. For the first time in my life, I controlled my own destiny. And other people’s. There was nothing Doc, Pete, Sammy or anyone but me with my two stupid tired legs could do to get that place. If I chose, I could ease up a little and settle for fourth and they would have to watch helpless while all their plans, all that cash, fizzled in front of their eyes. There’s no money at all to speak of in an Olympic double. It’s been done so many times. The triple is the only one that counts. So there I was with this marvelous feeling of self-determination. It was as good as adrenalin. And when I got it, I knew I wanted more, so I had to get that third place.’
‘Just for yourself,’ said Dryden.
‘You bet. It’s something I’d never experienced, never even thought about before, carrying people’s hopes. Jack, I like it. I like the feeling that I could get to the Finals in Moscow with the whole of America watching me and if I chose, I could win, but just as easily I could’ — she paused, considering, then laughed — ‘I could stop running and pee on the track to show how much I care about gold medals.’
‘What an idea!’ said Dryden, trying to treat it casually. ‘Look, you’re undermining my confidence.’
‘That’s why I’m saying it. Nobody can take Goldengirl for granted any more. She’s not an automaton. She’s an independent human spirit. You think I’m feverish? I’ll tell you another thing. Coming up the home stretch I knew I could beat Janie Canute. I can take anyone on a dip finish. All I had to do was stay close up. She’s a Jesus Freak — I suppose you know. Real charitable. I talked to her earlier in the week. You wouldn’t meet a more generous-hearted girl. Really, there’s nothing to dislike in her unless you have a hangup about religious people. But in that final 100 metres of the race I felt quite savage toward her. A cat-and-mouse thing, letting her steal a few inches ahead, knowing all the time I was dominant. When you run shoulder to shoulder with someone there’s a special kind of intimacy between you. And if you’re the one with the whip hand, hmm, that’s fabulous. Ugly, maybe, but an experience I savored. Relished, even. Now you know the kind of person I am. I’m discovering myself as I go on with this.’
‘You’re sure it is yourself?’
‘What do you mean?’
He chose his words judiciously. ‘You seem to be suggesting that this experience revealed your true nature. I’m not sure that this is so. It could be the first chance you’ve had to release some inner tensions.’
Scornfully, she snapped back, ‘Don’t talk like Sammy. It doesn’t carry conviction. Are you telling me I’m basically a sweet little girl, not mean at all?’
He answered with a generalization. ‘In top-class sports it’s unusual to be friendly with your rivals. You can make a show of it, shake hands with them before the race, but inside you’re hoping they drop dead on the track.’
‘I know. The killer instinct,’ she said in a bored voice. ‘Now tell me that’s just something you put on, like track shoes.’
Dryden shook his head. ‘I know plenty of sports stars, remember. As personalities, they differ a lot. They have one thing in common: when they’re down to the wire, they are ruthless, Goldine, ruthless. It takes an experience like the one you had yesterday to discover that.’
She laughed. ‘You’re a smart talker, Jack. What am I supposed to do — shout Eureka, I have the essential quality of a champion? You don’t have to preach to me. I’ve had a bellyful of therapy. I’m on another trip now. Self-discovery. I’ll let you know how it works out.’
Seventeen
Pan Am Flight 164 was three hours into its five-and-a-half-hour schedule between Los Angeles and New York. From his pile of papers in the First Class bay of the Boeing 747, Dryden picked up a copy of Sportscene that had caught his eye on the bookstand at L.A. International Airport. It was dated August 1. Instead of the usual baseball player, the cover photo featured the shapelier back view of a girl athlete, her face turned to glance over her shoulder, a bright-eyed, confident look, framed in soft brown hair. She was in the blue-and-white strip-costume of East Germany. The picture was artfully cut off at the thighs to focus attention on the tightly stretched white shorts. The creases on view were not in the fabric. The caption read: URSULA KRÜLL: ‘MOSCOW IS MINE.’
He turned to the cover story.
In a classroom in a Luckenwalde junior school, thirty miles south of Berlin, sit 34 eleven-year-olds, straight-backed, arms folded, girls with hair ribbons, boys in white shirts. One place is empty: the center column, second from front. ‘Nobody sits there until after the Spartakiad,’ explains head teacher Heinz Krämer. ‘That place is reserved for the outstanding athlete of the class. It is the place Ursula Krüll once occupied. I taught her myself,’ he proudly adds, his thoughts darting back to 1969.
Ursula is currently the fastest girl runner in the world. When she was no bigger than Herr Krämer’s pupils, she competed in the Spartakiad, a festival of sports at regional and national level involving over four million children. She was a slimly built child with two red hair ribbons. Those ribbons got to be a familiar sight as she raced to easy victories over all other girls of her age group.
East Germany spends five per cent of its national income on sports development. The State Secretariat for Physical Culture and Sport draws together athletic activities in schools, factories, co-operatives and recreation zones into a cohesive program, ensuring that talents like Ursula’s are fostered from childhood through maturity. She was sent to one of the twenty sports schools for children of precocious physical ability. At twelve, she was already listed as a potential competitor for the Olympic Games. At seventeen, she won her first national title, over 100 metres, and at eighteen, in 1976, she competed in the Montreal Olympics. She qualified for the Final, but was not among the medal-winners. ‘It was the experience I went for,’ she explains. ‘Montreal was never intended as my Games. I’ve been working to a ten-year program since I was twelve. Montreal was for other girls. Moscow... Moscow is mine.’