Such is the magic of the Olympic Trials that some races capture the excitement of the fan so powerfully that they remain forever in the memory. Consider the men’s 800 final in 1984. It lasted little more than 100 seconds, yet for all who saw it, that stunning competition will live forever.
As the eight men lined up on the track at the Los Angeles Coliseum that June 19, perhaps nothing seemed so inevitable as the fact that James Robinson and Don Paige would make another Olympic team in the next couple minutes. Robinson, the oldest man in the field at 29, had won seven national titles in a sterling career that had seen him rank as high as number two in the world and make two Olympic teams. Paige, 27, the defending champion, had ranked number one in the world in 1980, and looked poised to test his strength against Robinson’s fabled finishing speed.
Third place would be up for grabs. Maybe Johnny Gray, who was celebrating his 24th birthday, had a chance. He had tied his PR of 1:45.41 in the weeks before the meet. At nationals two years earlier, he had placed second, gaining some experience to draw on. Earl Jones had the next-fastest PR in the field. He had run 1:45.79 behind Brazilian Joaquim Cruz at the NCAA Championships. In experience the 19-year-old Eastern Michigan sophomore was lacking. He had taken up running little more than three years earlier.
Eugene Sanders, a 1:46.03 performer, was better known as a quartermiler with 45.29 speed. Many considered him lucky just to make the final. Stanley Redwine, at 1:46.13, had better credentials. The Arkansas alum had won a medal at the Pan-Am Games. Then there was John Marshall, a Villanova junior and a longshot by anyone’s reckoning. He had clocked a best of 1:46.20 in the quarterfinals two days earlier, but had only made an NCAA final once in three tries. Pete Richardson, a 1:47.18 runner for Arizona State, was still best-known the national high school record-holder for the distance. Like everyone else in the field, he hoped to become known for something else on this day.
Robinson and Paige surely planned on business as usual: a first 200 in 25-seconds or so, a 400 split in the 52s, and then the kicks. What they didn’t do was consider the fact that the two youngest runners in the field saw that one coming. Says Marshall, who at 20 was senior only to Jones, “I remember talking to Earl. We knew doggone well we weren’t going to outkick any of these guys. James Robinson has a patented kick from 200 out and Don Paige had a patented kick from 300 out. We were going to have to take it right to them. I was in a no-lose position, because I wasn’t picked to make the team anyway. I just figured I’d run as fast as I can as long as I can.“
Jones had been convinced by his coach, Bob Parks, to also hammer the pace. “Coach Parks and I had sat around trying to figure out how to take the kick out of these guys,” he remembers. “We had to go for it.”
Recalls Parks, “We worked on Earl for three months to get him to get out and go. He was worried; he said, ‘But I’ll get walked on if I take the lead.‘ I told him, ‘The people who get walked on are the ones who are no good. They take the lead because they have no choice.‘ ” At the time, no one else in the field realized that when Jones had run a PR of 1:46.88 at the Kentucky Relays eight weeks earlier, he had gone out in the low-49s for 400. He was ready.
When the gun went off, the race sure looked like the same old story. Robinson and Paige gravitated to the rear. The less-experienced runners took to the front. Says Parks, “On the first turn, we weren‘t sure if Earl would do it. Then he just hauled and took off.“
Jones, with Redwine on his shoulder, screamed through the 200 in 24.2. The field spread out quickly. And rather than looking around sheepishly and dropping back as many inexperienced racers are wont to do after such an auspicious opening, Jones stared straight ahead and kept going. “It was like tunnel vision,” he says. “I was in a zone. I concentrated on what I had to do.”
Through 400 in a startling 50.2, Jones continued driving. Redwine and Marshall hung close. Gray started to realize something was amiss, and he began his move to the front. “Considering who was setting the pace, I thought he was a dead duck,” says Gray. “l went after him because of who he was. I thought, if he could do it, I should be able to do it. I felt I was a better runner.” In the rear, Paige and Robinson waited for the front runners to start tying up. They weren’t alone. The TV broadcasters and most of the knowledgeable fans in the stands buzzed with anticipation over when the Jones and company would fold, and when the veterans would kick.
Jones hit 600 meters in 1:16.7, a time more than two seconds faster than the runners had passed that post in the previous five national championships. What was going through his head? “Confidence,” he says. “I wasn’t afraid of anyone. I was strong. I was lifting 300Ibs. I had all my distance basework. The speed came natural.”
Redwine ran a step behind Jones, but started to hit the wall around the final turn. He faded away, as Gray and Robinson made their big moves. Paige gave chase, couldn’t pull closer. Jones entered the homestretch with Gray in pursuit. The expected collapse never came, as Jones fought off the fatigue that hit him in the last 10 meters and leaned forward just enough to hold off Gray’s charge in a photofinish. A couple steps behind, Robinson had passed Marshall, but the young Villanovan dived at the finish line and the two crossed in an inseparable tangle, both thinking they had made the team. Then began the wait, as runners and fans alike took deep breaths and looked toward the Coliseum scoreboard for the final verdict.
The results, when the athletes saw them, were difficult to comprehend. Jones had won in an American Record 1:43.74. Gray, in second, produced the same clocking and thus tied Jones‘ new record. They had both skipped completely past the 1:44s in their leap from national class to world class. “When I looked up at the clock, I couldn’t believe the time,” recalls Gray. Third, in the closest of verdicts, went to unheralded Marshall. He and Robinson both clocked 1:43.92, just 1/100th of a second slower than Rick Wohlhuter’s American Record at the start of the race. Marshall had skipped over not only the 1:44s, but the 1:45s. “I thought the scoreboard was broken,” he says. Veteran Robinson could only have been stunned at the thought that the fastest race of his storied career didn’t put him on the Olympic team.
To that point in history, only 21 times had the 1:44 barrier been breached, and never by more than two men in one race. That four would do so at the U.S. Olympic Trials made the world sit up and take notice. Behind those four, Paige finished a defeated fifth in 1:45.17. Redwine (1:45.32) and Richardson (1:46.62) both ran lifetime bests. Sanders clocked 1:47.05 in last.
“l think that everyone knew that they had just run the race of their lives,” remarks Marshall, now the head coach at Villanova. “l think we knew we had just done something really big. l have a photo on my desk of the three of us on the podium. We all knew we had done something historic.”
Many hailed the race as a revolution in 800-meter running. But running fast from the gun never caught on, perhaps for one simple reason. It hurts. And it takes a brave runner to gamble it all and risk failing badly in the most important race of his life. Gray credits Jones, later his teammate in the Santa Monica Track Club, with making the race. “He wasn’t going to give,” says Gray. “Earl wasn’t scared to test himself.”
A year later, at the national championships in Indianapolis, Jones carried his experiment one step farther. He took it out in 23.2 seconds for the first 200, and had a 15-meter lead when he passed 400m in an unheard-of 48.4 seconds. His Olympic teammates, Gray and Marshall, caught him before the finish that time, Gray winning in 1:44.01., while Marshall ran l:44.53 to Jones‘ 1:44.58.
Afterward, Jones approached coach Parks and said, “l bet you think l ran pretty dumb.” Parks thought for a second before responding, “As far as winning the race, you probably did. But if you thought about working at it and perfecting that race, you would break all of the records. That’s the way they’re going to do it if they break 1:40.”
This week, on the Atlanta track, the 800 final will again take place on June 19, twelve years to the day after the momentous Los Angeles race. Johnny Gray, on his 36th birthday, figures to be the favorite. John Marshall, retired since 1991, will watch from the stands.
Earl Jones, whose career effectively ended when his right knee was crushed in a 1986 auto accident, will be there too. None of them can predict how the magic will happen again, but they all know it will. These are the Trials, after all.
[This article was originally published in the souvenir program for the 1996 Olympic Trials.]