The Front Runner

track power that selects its Olympic team in this brutal way. All the others handpick their teams on the basis of that season's overall performance. Track people argue about which is the better way. Either way, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes politics that can get just as bloody as the spiking out on the track.
    So, when Billy and I flew out to Los Angeles for
    the Trials in the first week of July, we knew that people were saying openly that Billy would not make it. The handful of powerful officials and coaches who control U.S. athletics can exert all kinds of subtle pressures.
    "They'll louse him up somehow," one friendly official told me.
    "And besides," everybody was gleefully saying, "Billy just got married, so . . ." Myth still hath it that having sex is not good for a runner, especially before a big meet.
    Another thing to worry about was that Bob Dellinger had been working hard. His own 5,000 and 10,000 meter times had improved to the point where he was within shot of Billy's best times. Like Billy he had been playing it smart. He had not been racing himself to death all season, as so many others do, only to arrive at the Trials past their peak. Like Billy, Dellinger had even passed up the AAU national championships in June.
    It would have been cheaper to drive to Los Angeles, But several days' sitting on his hamstrings in the car might have made Billy stiff, so we shot the money on airline tickets. In Los Angeles, we checked into the Costa Clara Hotel near the stadium, where a lot of other runners were staying. We tried hard to keep the press at arm's length. Billy had gotten tired of answering the same questions over and over, so he mimeographed a one-page resume of his nine years in track and silently handed it out.
    The afternoon that we drove to the stadium for the 10,000 heat, it was Billy's first public appearance since our marriage, and we got a shock. A big crowd was waiting there at the entrance. When we got out of the car, we were mobbed and the police had to pry us through.
    Shrieking worshipful girls and quieter worshipful gays begged Billy for autographs, and crowded him so hard he could hardly move a pencil to sign them. Dozens of admirers, both gay and straight, were wearing T-shirts that said GO BILLY and BE KIND TO THE
    ANIMAL. They all wanted to touch him and hug him. Some of them even wanted my autograph.
    But in the same crowd, there were also people who screamed curses and obscenities at us. Their eyes were blazing with hate, and their faces were twisted. As we struggled through, my face and Billy's were spat in several times. Someone pitched a ripe tomato at Billy and it made a red spatter on his blue warm-ups.
    Inside, Billy turned to look back at the crowd. I was shaken, wondering if it had spoiled his psych for the race. He looked thoughtful, but still calm, and wiped the spit off his face with his sleeve.
    "Well," he said, "now we know how the little black kids felt the first day they walked into the white school."
    Activist distanceman Mike Stella, who had also been caught in the crush and nearly lost his athletic bag, stood there appalled. He was the one who had privately spoken up on Billy's behalf.
    "Christ," said Stella, "you guys ought to have a couple of bodyguards."
    At the nearest water cooler, he helped us wash the tomato stain off Billy's warmups with cold water.
    But the experience seemed to provoke Billy's cold stubbornness, and he ran a good tactical race that day, qualifying for the final. Stella, who also had his eye on the 10,000-5,000 double, qualified too.
    The final was run on July 5. This time we avoided the crowd by sneaking into the stadium through a back entrance. But the shrieking admirers and detractors were all through the stands. Outside, a Gay Youth group and a couple of straight youth groups were hawking the GO BILLY T-shirts, and hundreds were wearing them now. A YAF group and the Jesus freaks were selling T-shirts that said STOP BILLY.
    Billy posed for photographers wearing a STOP BILLY T-shirt. "They'll need more than a rag to stop me," he said.
    But I knew he was just a little nervous, and barely keeping his dharma balanced. From what quarter
    would come the political ploy that would try to keep him off the team?
    As he went to the starting line with the rest of the field, my stomach was tied in knots.
    The tactical problems of this race were complex for Billy, and he was not a genius at flexible tactics. Theoretically he didn't have to run an