A Kind of Grace (25 page)
She and many other people saw that and were outraged. Bobby received dozens of angry letters. Anyway, this woman who approached us congratulated me. Then she looked at Bobby and said, “I know what those initials B.K. stand for: Bobby Knight. You're the Bobby Knight of track and field. I don't like him and I don't like you.”
I was stunned. Bobby took it in stride. He said to me afterward, “When Phil Jackson sends Michael Jordan back into an NBA Finals game with a sprained ankle it's a gutsy move by the coach and a display of Jordan's heart. When I do that with you, because you're a woman and my wife, I'm an abusive husband and you're a victim.”
I agree with Bobby. That woman and the others who say such things aren't giving me much credit. They assume that I'm some kind of doormat who would let a man exploit me without standing up for myself. Believe me, that's not my personality.
In Tokyo in 1991, once Bobby determined that the ankle wasn't broken or seriously sprained, he didn't want me to start doubting myself or become tentative, the way I did after the hamstring injury during the 1984 Olympics. Suffering an injury is like falling off a horse. You have to get right back on or you'll be afraid for the rest of your life.
Also, not all the yelling is negative. When I'm in competition, I want to hear Bobby's voice shouting out technical instructions, split times and firing me up. Usually, he's saying things like, “You're not going home with me unless you give me a 7 [-meter-long jump]!” Or, “You're not on target, pick it up!” during the 800. Or, “It's about time you woke your ass up!” if he thinks I'm not performing my best.
One of our worst days together occurred after we'd been married for about a year and a half. We were working at the high-jump area at Drake Stadium at UCLA. Bobby was talking to Daley Thompson, the 1980 and 1984 Olympic decathlon gold medalist, and a couple of other athletes while I tried to master the flop technique and break my habit of crossing the high bar in the sitting position. I've had a phobia about laying my head and arms back and allowing myself to fall backward since high school. Early on, I tried it that way, missed the mat and fell on the ground on my tailbone. Bobby wanted me to practice flopping off a trampoline and I refused to do it because I was afraid.
“Damn it, I'm the coach out here,” he screamed in front of Daley and the others. “Do it my way or leave the track.” I marched off. I was never so embarrassed and angry in my life.
After a few minutes Daley came over and consoled me in that beautiful British accent of his. “Jackie, you're going to have good days and you're going to have bad days,” he said. “It's okay to leave, but remember that Bobby wouldn't do anything to hurt you. He's trying to help you. He's in your corner.”
I appreciated Daley's comments. Bobby and I had to find a way to peacefully resolve our differences and maintain both our marriage and our on-track partnership. Later, we both agreed we loved each other and we couldn't allow track and field to interfere with the personal side of our relationship.
We designated the office next to our garage as the mad room. It's the place where we aired our feelings about the day's events on the track and where we left the coach-athlete relationship. Once we stepped out of the mad room into the house, everything about track was forgotten and we were husband and wife again. The arrangement worked.
Bobby loves to tell people he's the boss at home, that if we are deadlocked over an issue he has the tie-breaking vote. I always laugh when I hear that or read it in an article, because that's not the way it is at all. We each have equal input, 50-50, and that's the basis upon which decisions are made, not 49-49, with Bobby holding the last 2 percent like some kind of trump card, the way he's always saying. I know it makes him feel good to think that. If he wants to say it, he'll have to put it in his book, because that isn't how it is in my book. Or in our house.
People have also accused him of sponging off my success to advance his career. The fact is, he was already gainfully employed as a coach at UCLA and was developing a group of potential world-class athletes when I got there. I joined
his
group.
The other thing people don't know about Bobby is that he's never collected a coaching fee from any of the athletes who've worked with him, no matter how long he's coached them or how successful they've become. Neither Al, nor Florence, nor Gail Devers, nor Jeanette Bolden, nor Val Brisco, nor Greg Foster has ever paid Bobby a dime for coaching help. After the 1984 Olympics, while he was head track coach at UCLA, he formed the World Class Track Club, with sponsorship money from Adidas. The club's pool of money covered training and traveling expenses for the team members who were out of school. They included Al, Florence, Jeanette, Val, Greg and me.
In 1986, Imperial Chemical Industries, ICI, came on board as a track club sponsor. The two companies continued to sponsor the club for several years. During that time, we all wore Adidas warmup suits and uniforms and T-shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with the ICI logo. Bobby also started a management firm, World Class Management, and negotiated sponsorships and endorsement deals for members of the track club. After I graduated, he negotiated my shoe and apparel deal with Adidas, which also paid me a monthly stipend for living expenses. He acted as Gail Devers's agent in negotiations for her sponsorship contract with Nike when she finished at UCLA. As a coach, he did not allow any of his athletes to be charged more than a 10 percent commission fee, which I think was reasonable. He continues to have the same arrangement with Gail, who's a client of JJK & Associates, the sports marketing and management firm we formed after folding World Class Management several years ago.
Bobby's interests extend far beyond the weight room and the track. He resigned as head coach at UCLA in 1993, not only to work full-time with track athletes such as Gail and me, but to train competitors in several sports besides track, including professional tennis players Zina Garrison and Monica Seles, and hockey goalie Grant Fuhr. Impressed by his results with Grant, then–St. Louis Blues coach Mike Keenan hired Bobby to be the team's strength and conditioning coach in 1996.
Sometimes, I think that deep down Bobby's a good ol' boy. His favorite pastimes, other than attending hockey games and listening to George Strait and Reba McEntire songs, are going line dancing with his cowboy boots on, watching stock car races and hanging out with Jeff Gordon, Bill Elliott and the other drivers he knows on the NASCAR circuit.
Despite what others may think, I know that Bobby always has my best interests at heart. I think I'm the most important person in the world to him. He wants me to be happy and will do whatever it takes to ensure it.
World's Best
O
ne of the reasons I love competing in track and field is that the results are determined by objective standards. No points added or deducted for style. Run the fastest, throw the farthest, leap the highest and you win.
But track and field does have its subjective moments. They come at the end of the season when
Track & Field News
hands out its rankings and awards. By the end of 1985, I was ranked third in the world in the heptathlon by the magazine, even though I posted the top score among all competitors worldwide, 6,718 points. That performance came at the National Sports Festival. The reason offered by the editors for my placement: I hadn't compiled those scores during a major international competition. In their eyes, I couldn't claim the number one spot until I did it against the world's best, namely the East Europeans.
It perturbed me. In the heptathlon, unlike other track and field events, points and results are awarded based on how an athlete fares in comparison to an objective standard, rather than on the athlete's performance relative to the rest of the field. I don't see why it should matter who else was at the meets I entered. The way I saw it, my 6,718 should be compared to the best scores of the other top heptathletes: Sabine Paetz, Sibylle Thiele and Ines Schulz of East Germany, and Natalya Shubenkova, Marianna Maslennikova and Larisa Nikitina of the Soviet Union. The athlete with the highest score in a given year is the best that year. Simple, straightforward and objective. But that's not the way it goes.
As time went on and I gained more experience, I became increasingly cynical about the media's assessments of my performances. But in 1985, I was new to international competition and accepted the magazine's decision. The following year, 1986, I tried to play by their rules and give them what they wanted. I headed to Europe to face those women and other foreign competitors in the heptathlon. At the time, the world record stood at 6,946 points, scored by Sabine Paetz in 1984. My goal was to be the first woman to score 7,000 points in the event.
It was impossible not to notice the stark differences between track in the U.S. and Europe. The crowds abroad were routinely larger, more enthusiastic and more knowledgeable. At the Mount San Antonio College Relays earlier in the spring, the first major track competition of the year in the U.S., the crowd watching our event had shrunk to a dozen coaches by the time we started the 800 meters. In contrast, at the Gotzis Invitational in Austria, the promoters delivered enormous and enthusiastic standing-room-only crowds, even for the heptathlon. Despite blustery winds, cold temperatures and rain, the stands were filled to capacity, around 20,000 people, during both days of our competition. And they understood the competition. Everyone had been given a program listing our personal bests and the standards in each event. I remember the thrilled faces of the children as I competed. It was such a revelation to see them celebrate and wave their programs wildly when I broke Jane Frederick's American record and won the meet with 6,841 points. It was gratifying and exciting to be appreciated that way.
Next stop was the inaugural Goodwill Games in Moscow. I was excited about the trip to Russia. I couldn't wait to observe life behind the Iron Curtain. As a child, like other American kids, I'd heard so many horror stories about what it was like in Communist countries, I wanted to see for myself. I expected to see men in trench coats, fedoras and sunglasses in alleys and on park benches, as well as frowning, uniformed Russian policemen stalking the streets. I had no idea how they treated American citizens over there.
The reality, surprisingly, wasn't far off from those caricatures. Security was as tight as an Ace bandage. We were escorted to a car at the airport, and as we drove along the highway into downtown Moscow, we saw security guards along the side of the road, for miles and miles. Not until the car passed Red Square and the Kremlin did I start feeling somewhat at ease.
I was immediately struck by how seriously the Russians took everything. There was an attendant on every floor, checking keys each time we got off the elevator to go to our rooms. Our hotel was clean and nicely furnished, but the room was about the size of a closet. When more than two of us wanted to hang around and talk, we sat outside in the hallway because we couldn't all fit comfortably inside. Creepiest of all, I felt like the walls had ears. I kept hearing strange noises as I walked around. When I talked on the phone, there was an almost constant clicking sound in the receiver. I was sure the line was bugged.
We all were afraid of getting sick. The threat of diarrhea was ever present, U.S. track officials had warned us. After experiencing a day of dining Russian-style, I stopped eating the food and started subsisting on bagels and bottled water.
Everyone ate the same dish at mealtime in the hotel restaurant. No choices. No substitutions. On the first morning there, we were served a tasty breakfast of chicken and rice. When the waiter walked in with the same chicken and rice dish at lunch and again at dinner, I knew something was wrong. The food had been hot at breakfast. By lunch, it was warm. At dinner, it was cold. Sure enough, the second day of the heptathlon, I developed diarrhea and a queasy stomach.
Bobby arrived the day after I did, without the credentials or hotel room American track officials had promised to provide. A liaison to the event organizers who met him at the airport helped him get to the hotel. There, one of the American chaperones gave him a pass for the stadium and put him on the shuttle bus.
Meanwhile, we endured a steady stream of logistical snafus at Lenin Stadium during the meet. They changed the starting time for our event after we'd left the warmup track and were waiting to go onto the competition track. There were nearly a dozen of us crammed in the tiny waiting space.
There was a real Cold War atmosphere in the room. The Russian competitors mostly kept to themselves. They were very cliquey, not at all friendly. We knew they were under strict orders from their coaches not to mingle with athletes from the West. Every move they made was monitored and they could be severely reprimanded if they showed any friendliness. After learning about the strict system under which they lived and competed, I didn't criticize them for their attitudes and actions. I actually felt sorry for them that they had to suppress so much of their personalities. I couldn't imagine living and competing under such restrictions.
I chatted with my teammate Cindy Greiner, whom I'd known for years from the collegiate circuit. As we waited in the cramped area, our muscles started to get cold. We all jumped around and bent over, doing anything to keep our legs and arms loose.
Once the competition began, everything went smoothly. But I was apprehensive. I was still battling the demons of self-doubt that had undone me in Eugene in 1980 and four years later at the Los Angeles Games. A week earlier in Oslo, Norway, I'd been sitting in my hotel room with Val, discussing whether I was being unrealistic in expecting to run the 100-meter hurdles in 13 seconds. Bobby overheard me and started chastising me for the lack of faith in myself and his coaching. I knew he was right, but I couldn't help myself.
I didn't see Bobby or hear his voice when it was time for the first event. That was unusual. He always let me know where he was at the start of a competition. No matter how loud the cacophony on the track, I could always pick up his voice and hear him shout, “Okay, Jackie, let's do it!”