The Front Runner

I'm not drinking much. When we go home, I'll quit and start training again."
    Not having drunk hard liquor before, Vince had no tolerance. In the wee small hours of the morning he'd crawl back to the press village totally smashed. He slept
    at odd hours, started popping bennies to stay awake, and didn't eat much. It was amazing how unhealthy and dissipated he started to look in a few days.
    Billy tried to reason with him too. He was actually curt with Billy and said, "Just leave me alone."
    Billy and I didn't see much of each other during the Games. For his own safety's sake I wanted him to stay shut up in that security-ringed Village. The U.S. dormitory was so heavily guarded that, even when I did get into the village, there was no sneaking inside to Billy's room to make love. And I didn't want to make a fool of myself climbing up to his balcony like a lovesick Romeo.
    So we did without sex for a whole week. The only thing that made it bearable was the endeavor that we were both caught up in.
    Since the USOC considered me persona non grata, they had not brought me to Montreal attached semiofficially to the team as they had several other coaches. To get myself in, I had wangled an assignment from Sports Illustrated to write an exclusive report on the Games. This got me in as a media person. Vince came with me as my research assistant. The two of us shared an apartment in one of the buildings in the press village.
    So, with my press pass, I could get into the Olympic village to interview athletes and, of course, to see Billy. The military had no qualms about letting me in, because they figured I wasn't going to bomb anybody.
    Whenever I came to the Village, Billy was always waiting at the main gate. The minute the troops let me through, he threw Ms arms around me. He stayed with me and Vince all through our interviews with other athletes. With work done, we could stroll over the lawns or sit in one of the outdoor cafes drinking milk or mineral water. We held hands, or had our arms around each other. Everybody seemed to get used to the sight.
    When we were apart, we fell back on the telephone. We'd lie on our beds in our separate rooms miles apart, and talk about how much we missed each other.
    "I won't last the whole Games," he said. "It'll make me too tense. Maybe one night I'll come out. We can spend the night in Dad's hotel room."
    Or we talked about the experiences he was having.
    "What a gas," he told me. "All these kids. Some of them are unbelievable. That's what the Games is, isn't it? It's like Woodstock in sweatsuits. It's just a bunch of kids getting together. All the adults with their politics and their rules are just not . . . not the Games at all. And it's so strange to be treated like a human being for a change. I'm going to get a swelled head."
    "Are there any other gay people in there?" I wanted to know.
    "Listen," he said, "you wouldn't believe. Not many, but some."
    And he told me of several young people, two of them women, who had come out to him in private, and told him their gay griefs. He had spent some time with them, trying to help them sort out their feelings about themselves. "After they leave, I always cry," he said. "What can I do for them?"
    "Any cruising in there?" I said.
    "Well," he said, "like, yesterday, this decathlete wanted to talk to me. Turned out he didn't want any gay counseling. He wanted my body. I told him to get off."
    But despite all the excitement and the human distractions, Billy didn't forget for a moment why he was there.
    Some of the other athletes were partying too much, going to bed late, eating crazy things. But Billy went to bed every night at the exact hour he was supposed to. He worked out scrupulously, and was following his pre-meet diet down to the last spoonful, for packing glycogen into the muscles. Distance coach Taplinger was taking good care of him, shepherding him through the red tape.
    Under every grin, every twitch of his body in the discotheque, Billy was aware of the red track waiting for him there in the center of the monster stadium.
    When the 10,000 meter was run on the first Sunday of the Games, I went to my stadium seat with a strange
    mixture of peace and nervousness. We had done everything we could. All Billy had to do now was run.
    What" can I say about his victory in the 10,000 meter? It isn't the 10,000 but the 5,000 a week later that I have to write the most about.
    In the 10,000 he ran a perfect tactical race. It was his race from the