It's time to seize the moment

Sporting News, The, July 1, 1996 by Dave Kindred

Dan O'Brien, the American decathlon hero, put the javelin into flight, the spear rising above the turf of Atlanta's Olympic Stadium and coming to earth at a distance of 214 feet. It was a distance so much greater than O'Brien's previous personal best that he took one look at a scoreboard and did this: Went hippity-hoppin' and happy-houerin' even as the stadium announcer joined in with this official word: "Wowwwww!"

Until the moment of his third and final throw, O'Brien's expected victory in the United States Olympic Trials was in doubt perhaps even in jeopardy. To quote the man chasing the hero, Chris Huffins, who says you must believe you can slay the dragon or you never will, "Though two throws of the jav, I thought I could get him."

But O'Brien's third throw reminded Huffins of his proper place in the universe. Wryly, with respect and a rueful smile, he said of O'Brien, "If you keep messin' with the dragon, he's gonna wake up."

Aroused to ferocity, Dan O'Brien sailed the last javelin almost 20 feet farther than his second-best throw of the day, almost nine feet farther than on the day in 1992 when he set the world record in the de. cathlon and almost six feet farther than he'd ever thrown the thing.

Besides the deflation of Huffins, O'Brien's throw had another effect It put him on pace after nine of 10 events to break his own record. O'Brien needed to run the 1,500 meters in 4:43.48. The day he set the record, he did it in 4:42.10.

"My coaches and I talked about it, saying 4:43 would do it," O'Brien said, "and I went out there thinking I could do it."

A nice thought It is not however, a thought shared by the last American to win the Olympic decathlon, Bruce Jenner, who since this glory days in 1976 at Montreal has made a career of being Bruce Jenner, Olympic Hero. Jenner is among track mavens who have seen O'Brien fail so often in critical moments that they believe he bows to pressure rather than rising against it.

Three times, with a world record for the taking, O'Brien had done poorly in the 1,500, which is less a test of speed than of will coming as it does at the end of two days' work. Worse, as the world champion in 1992, O'Brien didn't make the U.S. Olympic team; he failed at this first height in the pole vault.

So just before O'Brien set out in the Atlanta 1,500, someone asked Jenner, in the stadium doing television work, "What should O'Brien's mind-set be?"

"He's made the team?" Jenner said, meaning the U.S. Olympic team. "No, about the world record

"He's got no guts in the 1,500," Jenner said. "And it's 100 degrees out there."

"They say 112 on the track."

Jenner was about to go to work, but before he walked through a door, he said of O'Brien, "Maybe he'll surprise us," only to add with a chuckle of denigration, "But he's never surprised us before."

Maybe that's so. But surely someone might have been surprised by O'Brien's answer three months after the 1992 debacle at the Olympic Trials. He had watched the Barcelona Olympics from afar. Then he set his world record of 8,891 points at Talence, France, where he said, "You're looking at the world's greatest athlete. That's all I wanted to prove."

Maybe, then, there was nothing to prove in Atlanta where the heat was unholy when O'Brien began his 1,500 just before 6 p.m. The first group's winner did 4:43.71, that by the youngest man in the field, 23, a kid next to O'Brien, the oldest Trials decathlon winner ever, three weeks short of 30..

Even as a claque chanted "Four-four-three" when O'Brien passed by, he gave little effort in the event that he admits is so painful the mere anticipation of it has brought him to tears. And when he was done, he gave this summary of this Atlanta suffering: "The first lap, I thought, "Hey, all right.' But it just got hotter and hotter and hotter. After the first lap, it just spiraled down."

The more precise truth is, he jogged die first 1,400 meters and ran the last 100 to do a 5:12.03. While that was good enough to win, it was poor enough that someone asked O'Brien, "If this had been the Olympics, would you have made a more positive effort at the record?"

He said yes and added that he would work on conditioning in the South's heat for the next month. He also pointed out that his best 1,500s are done in the cool of night the Olympic 1,500 is set for 9 p.m. "No more tricks, no more games, you just have to lay it on the fine," he said. "I will push myself as hard as I can."

This is a seriously confident athlete. Maybe because he shares the delicate and handsome countenance of the Atlanta baseball hero, right fielder David Justice, or maybe because he simply believes he can do it, O'Brien said that while he is good at all things athletic, even golf, his real ambition in life is this: "I'd like to play right field for the Atlanta Braves."

No surprise, then, that Dan O'Brien began the decathlon's second day by a quick exorcism of the'92 demon. The four years had "raced by, incredibly fast," O'Brien said, and now he faced a first height in the pole vault again, with the Olympics again at stake.