Friday, September 29, 2000
Runyan best of what Games offer
SYDNEY, Australia — The Olympics are deeper with life than with drugs. The cheaters remind us we are mortal. The others assure us we are human.
Her name is Marla Runyan and she is legally blind. When she races 1,500 meters, she can't see clearly the faces of her competitors. She can't see the finish line.
Because of a degenerative eye condition that left her legally blind by age 12, Runyan has 20/300 vision in her left eye and 20/400 in her right, with contact lenses. Runyan's peripheral vision is good enough she can navigate a track or a trail, but she can't always recognize someone 10 feet in front of her.
She came into the last 300 meters of her 1,500-meter semifinal Thursday fading in sixth place. Runyan had to finish in the top four to guarantee a place in the Saturday night finals, but all she had left was the power of desperation.
“They kept passing me,” Runyan said. “One, two, three, four, and then it was like, OK, now I'm in fifth. Then it was sixth.”
Hard to explain
She made up one spot in the last 200 meters. How? Who knows? Will works in strange ways at the Olympics. She finished fifth. It was a fast semifinal. Runyan was 11th of 12 qualifiers.
Let us pause now, from our recent duties as instant pharmacologists and seekers of snap-judgment truth, to praise Marla Runyan, who is blind and running in the 1,500-meter finals at the Olympic Games. Who reminds us, for one fine moment, why we embrace these Games the way we do.
“I'm so lucky,” she said. “I'm running with the best in the world. I'm going to run my heart out and enjoy it. I'm really proud of myself.”
She has light green eyes that wander a little, the way blind eyes do. Runyan has no problem looking you in the eye; she just needs to locate where that eye might be.
“I want to get out there and expect more from myself, whatever it might be,” Runyan said.
The 1,500-meter wheelchair racers pushed past her as she spoke. In a little while, the silver medalist from France, Claude Issorat, would push up the ramp to his podium, only to have his own excitement push him through the medal stand and out of his chair.
Issorat refused help, returned to his chair and climbed the podium. The smile never left his face.
“Medal?” Runyan asked, surprised at the question, “Do you have a chance?”
“Oh, no. I'm not that fast. I'm going to try to be competitive to the degree I can be, hopefully get a personal best out of this deal.”
Remember the good
In a few days, we'll pack up and leave all this dirty glory behind. The hope is we'll remember Runyan and forget C.J. Hunter. Embrace Rulon Gardner while we shun the Romanians and the Bulgarians and the chemically aware Americans, who cheat behind a wall of dominant self-righteousness.
We'll shed our cynicism like a bad day at work and allow the feelgood to make us shiver. We'll watch Marla run, and remember why we're here.
She's in the finals of the 1,500 meters. She hung on and qualified on guts, which was nothing new. Her eyes are nearly blind. She sees much.
“I want to put my honest effort into the final,” Runyan said. “Maybe I can get top eight.”
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at (513) 768-8454.
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