04 Aug2015
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What made this moment special was that it brought into focus not just the near-heroic desperation of a single professional athlete but a much more universal theme: the nature of parenthood.
Olympians could fill a pool with their tears, on a quadrennial basis. The nature of the competition ensures that however many dream of glory, most will only experience disappointment. At that moment, the bitter taste not just of a single defeat but of four years of wasted effort can simply be too much for some to handle. More than that, quite a few athletes can’t even win without tears. But no Olympic emotional outburst is ever likely to dislodge Derek Redmond’s in the minds not just of Britons but of anyone old enough to remember the 1992 Games.
Redmond travelled to two Olympics and both ended with injury-induced heartache, once in the most public circumstances. For all his ability as an athlete – and he was considered likely to win a medal in Barcelona – he will forever be remembered for tearfully completing his 400m semi-final using his father as a crutch. His body never gave him the opportunity to redefine the way the world perceived him: two years after the Barcelona Games, following an 11th operation on his achilles tendon, his athletics career was over. This was his last race of any significance.
Redmond had missed the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh with a hamstring injury, and withdrew from the 1988 Seoul Olympics minutes before his first heat having failed to recover from tendinitis, having had two painkilling injections that morning in an effort to make it on to the track. The following summer, still plagued by injuries, he came close to giving up sport altogether. What the world witnessed in 1992 was a man who had been continually brought low by injury simply refusing to submit yet again.
His body had given him some hope: in the first round Redmond had run his quickest 400m for four years. “I was feeling absolutely 100% before the race,” he told me in 2006. “I’d had two really good rounds without even trying and the night before the semi-final I’d talked with my father and my coach and we’d decided I was going to push a bit harder and try to get a good lane for the final.
“On the day everything went smooth. I got a really good start, which was unusual for me. I think I was the first to react to the pistol. My normal tactics were to get round the first bend and then put the burners on for 30m, accelerate hard. But by the time I’d got upright I was almost round the bend, much further than usual, and I decided not to bother, to save my energy in case I had to fight for the line. About three strides later I felt a pop.”
It was his hamstring. Redmond collapsed to the floor, clutching his leg. Most athletes would have been quietly carried off the track and towards medical attention, but as the Red Cross workers approached Redmond instead pushed himself back to his feet. “I got up quicker than I got out of my blocks,” he said. “I said to myself: ‘There’s no way I’m going to be stretchered out of these Olympics.’ I didn’t know where I was. I really, really believed I could still qualify.”
Bizarrely, the reason Redmond first started limping around the track was a belief that if he limped fast enough he might still overtake four people and qualify for the final. “Believe me, at the time I thought I was running,” he said later. “It’s only when I see the playback I realise I wasn’t actually running very quick at all.”
Meanwhile, Redmond’s father Jim was fighting his way on to the track. “When I saw Derek hit the deck, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me,” he told the Guardian. “I’m very involved in his training so I knew just how fit he was. All I can remember after that is telling the coach, Tony Hadley [not the lead singer in Spandau Ballet], to look after my camera. The next thing I knew, I was on the track.”
Jim told his son to stop, in case the injury might heal in time for him to compete in the relay. Derek refused. “Well then,” Jim said, “we’re going to finish this together.” And finish it they did, slowly, and with the younger man’s anguish becoming visibly greater with every pace.
Back in Barcelona, father and son batted away a succession of officials who tried and failed to convince them to clear the track. Jim, it turned out, was as much bouncer as buttress. “I’d never heard my dad using four-letter words,” Derek said the following day. “I learned a few new ones.”
“Even now, it’s hard to say how or why I did it,” said Jim. “It was a spontaneous reaction, as if I had seen him hit by a car. I certainly didn’t run down to help him finish – if anything it was to stop him. I could accept the fact that my son was injured, but not that he was going to carry on in pain, causing himself even greater damage.”
“After I crossed the line I was taken to the doctors and I was crying like a baby the whole time,” Redmond told me. “I had no idea how the crowd had reacted until I saw the video – they were the last thing on my mind. It could have gone one of two ways: they’d either think ‘what a complete prat’ or ‘good on him’. Luckily they chose the second one.”
What Redmond said
“Everything I had worked for was finished. I hated everybody. I hated the world. I hated hamstrings. I hated it all. I felt so bitter that I was injured again. I told myself I had to finish. I kept hopping round. Then, with 100 metres to go, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was my old man.”
What Redmond’s father, Jim, said
“I’m the proudest father alive, I’m prouder of him than I would have been if he had won the gold medal. It took a lot of guts for him to do what he did.”
Full article: Olympic Moments
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