The Front Runner

Sunkist.
    He wanted to run everywhere and run against everybody and beat everybody. I had a hard time holding him in, and chose his races carefully, wanting to keep him fresh and injury-free.
    We got him over to Europe again, for a few of the great winter cross-country races. (This time the AAU gave us no trouble about travel permits.) He ran in England, Belgium, France and Spain. Of course the Europeans now knew about him. But while he was teased and taunted here and there, he was treated more tolerantly than at home.
    The only country where he had trouble was Spain. We heard rumors that the Spanish government might not let him enter the country, because of their strict homosexual laws. But they changed their minds.
    When Billy showed up at the big meet at Granolles, a huge crowd was there to taunt, or just gawk at, the famous young American maricon. Roberto Gil and the other Spanish runners were under terrible pressure not to stain the nation's honor by getting beaten. I really felt sorry for them.
    It was also the kind of situation where Billy was at his most cold-blooded. The results were predictable.
    The runners went off at such a hot pace I knew they'd be stepping over dead bodies before the finish. Gil is a front-runner, and he stayed right up with Billy, and glared at him, and Billy simply ignored him. When Billy started his drive, he just dropped Gil flat, and everybody else. They came tearing down to the finish through the mud puddles looking more like sprinters, with Billy twenty-five yards in the lead. The course record was smashed to pieces. The crowd whistled Billy for winning, and whistled Gil for losing, and the police were holding them back.
    During the American indoor season, between February and May 1976, Billy went on a winning binge. Now he outclassed Bob Dellinger and everyone else in his events, and no one could push him. He had the speed now, and the stamina, and a long driving finish that was as deadly as a kick. He was knocking off all the big kickers in the U.S. now.
    It made his critics very uncomfortable to see him winning like that.
    In Europe he could now knock off all but a few— for instance, Armas Sepponan. Every time they met that winter, Armas still beat Billy—but narrowly. I was always amused to see how friendly the two of them were off the track, and how ready to kill each other they were on the track.
    "You make me work harder now," Armas told Billy. "But I also get better. I think I am breaking 27:30 in Montreal."
    "Twenty-seven thirty!" Billy told me later, despairingly.
    "He's just trying to psych you," I told him.
    The gays were keeping their promise to go to track meets. We saw them mostly in the big cities, where they felt safe enough to come out in numbers. Sometimes they exchanged insulting remarks with the old-guard track buffs.
    In addition, a few runners—only a few, fortunately —were very public about their intense dislike of Billy and Vince, and took it out on them in races.
    So the atmosphere often crackled with lightning tension at those indoor meets that winter.
    Bob Dellinger, now twenty-five, had his eye on the same 5,000-10,000 berth to Montreal that Billy did, and he was probably the most outspoken enemy. It wasn't merely that he was, as he put it, "anti-weirdo." It was a whole question of lifestyles—Dellinger belonged to Young Americans for Freedom and Athletes in Action, and Billy's whole carefree attitude revolted him.
    The promoters of the big indoor invitational meets, however much they might personally disapprove of
    Billy and Vince, saw them for what they were: good box-office. All that winter, the Matti-Sive-Dellinger thing packed the crowds in. Dellinger had once been able to "beat Billy at any distance between two and six miles, but now he couldn't any longer. "Losing is bad enough," he said, "but losing to a queer . . ." It was a double loss of masculinity, a public castration. But he could still beat Vince in the two-mile, so he kept slamming away at the two of them.
    The most explosive encounter the three had was in the gilt-edge Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in February 1976.
    That night, hundreds of gays showed up at the Garden. The gay organizations had put out the word that this was a night to show support. Here and there, as I looked through the smoky air at that huge crowd, I could see the male creatures of the night—TV's in silk turbans and feathers. There were big groups of leather-jacketed gays. There were signs