The Front Runner

Prescott is $10,000 a year," said Billy. He had a sheaf of mimeographs and handed them to the nearest committee man, making a motion to indicate that they should be distributed around the table. "I have listed all my expenses here for the single year I've been teaching. You can look at the trivia yourselves. All I'll say is that by the time I have paid my taxes and living expenses and all the expenses of being an amateur athlete, traveling to meets and stuff, right down to the last pair of shoes and $3.50 for my AAU card, I am about $535 into the hole."
    He paused and the room was silent. "You gentlemen have accused me of making unethical profits from my sport. So ... I want to know, what profits are you talking about?"
    They were all studying the sheets. The room was filled with the gentle sound of rustling.
    "Unlike many athletes in my country, I have never taken under-the-table payments or free equipment from manufacturers, because I knew damn well that somebody would use that against me before all this was over. The figures on this sheet are the stark truth about my financial situation. You can take them or leave them."
    He paused again, looking down for a few moments as if thinking, and then raised his head again. Aldo said later that everyone in the room was as if immobilized by the touch of those clear eyes of his.
    "Then there's your charge that I have used my running as a podium for gay politics. All I can say is, if I am on a podium, it is because people like you have put me there against my will."
    "Mr. Sive .. ." said the chairman.
    "I'm not finished." Billy's voice cut like a whip. "Let me finish, and then you can say whatever you want. Let's go clear back to when this all started, to when I was on the team at Oregon U. I never once, in all this time, stood up and said, Look, everybody, I'm a gay. Gus Lindquist found out about it and he kicked me off the team, and I didn't say a word. Then word got around to everybody in track, and behind my back they were saying, Hey, the kid's a queer, and I didn't say a word. Finally a reporter asks me, Oh, hey, Billy, are you really a homosexual, and I said I was, because he asked me a question and I believe in answering questions."
    His voice seared them like acid. It was shaking a little now.
    "Then all the uproar started, and not once did I say I was gay. People spat in my face and stabbed me in the back and reporters came around wanting to interview me. When the man I live with and I decided to, like, formalize our relationship, we didn't announce it to the press. It was everybody else who made the fuss. Every single step of the way, I've been on the defensive and saying as little as possible. It's everybody else who's having hysterics. All I want is to run and be left alone, and I'd be happy if the word gay weren't even mentioned. But as long as people like you keep fussing, then the issue is going to be there. Besides, if you think running can be a podium, then you must not know much about athletics. Being on a podium takes a lot of energy. Running the way I do takes a lot of energy. You can't do both, it's impossible, you'd go insane."
    He stopped, breathing a little more quickly. Then
    he shrugged a little and said softly, "If you want me off that podium, then you take me off it yourselves. The burden of this whole thing is yours, not mine."
    He turned away, and sat down by Aldo Franconi.
    "Gentlemen..."
    It was Armas' voice. Armas stood up.
    The head of the committee, Feit Oster of Germany, said, "Mr. Sepponan, this is not your affair."
    "It is very much my affair, yes," said Armas. "I think that you will listen to me. If you do not listen here, then you will be reading my words in the papers." His voice was even, but the threat was there.
    They listened. Armas said what he had to say. Subtle looks of consternation went around the table. When he had finished, Armas said, "Billy and I will await your decision. We are hoping that you are not forcing us to be so . . . how you say ... so dramatic."
    He and Billy walked out of the room together.
    We had dinner with Sepponan, and then he caught his plane back to Helsinki. "I think I am seeing you in Montreal," he said to us, smiling his small, northern smile.
    Two days later, the IOC eligibility committee announced mildly that it was satisfied with Billy's explanation about his job, and cleared him for Montreal.
    We were all a little limp.
    All but Billy. He was peaking, and he was breathing fire. He could hardly