Flashes of Panic

I implied but never really detailed my hour or so (in two half-hour sessions) with Maurice Greene in Valencia. Greene, who was the dominant 100m sprinter from ‘97 to ‘02 or so (and still won the ‘04 U.S. Olympic Trials and a bronze medal in Athens) announced his retirement earlier this year, and is now part of the IAAF’s “Ambassadors” program.

Greene was always as fast with his mouth as with his feet (among other stunts, he stripped off his spikes within seconds of crossing a finish line in first place, then doused them with a fire extinguisher) and it’s hard to imagine him building a successful career as, say, a rocket scientist.

But I discovered in Valencia something I probably could have figured out if I’d been paying attention: Greene knows and loves his sport, and is capable of communicating that enthusiasm in a relatively articulate manner. And while I won’t count on being invited over to see his gold medals, I thought we got along pretty well for two people of similar ages with practically nothing but this sport in common.

In other words, he’s a great ambassador. I suppose, having met his training partner Ato Boldon in Boston this winter, that I shouldn’t be surprised; Boldon himself, who picked up one of the minor medals in the slipstream of Michael Johnson’s Beamonesque 200m in Atlanta, is among the nicest guys you’d ever want to watch a track meet with.

The more I think about him, though, the more I want to know. Now that he’s retired, Greene has locked up a position as the fastest guy who’s never been busted, and that means something; the only retired sprinter with comparable credibility is Carl Lewis. Unlike some of his predecessors (e.g. Dennis Mitchell or Linford Christie) Greene didn’t get caught in some bizarre late-career trying-to-hang-on doping. He was never implicated in the BALCO mess. And some of his aspiring successors (e.g. Tim Montgomery or Justin Gatlin) went down in flames before they could even reach Greene’s longevity in the sport. This doesn’t mean Greene was clean, but unlike many cynics, I’m willing to give him the benefit of belief; I do think people can run that fast without doping, and I don’t have reason to believe that Greene didn’t.

But what a position he must have been in! People he knew, people he trained with, went down the doping path and got busted. He must have stood in the same position they did, at some point, and made the choice between (let’s be dramatic for a second) the dark side and the light side. He must have looked down that dark path, at least, and seen it from a perspective most of us haven’t. I’d love to hear what he has to say about that, among other things.

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