Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a sap.
A sports sap.
I hopped off my couch and cheered when Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi in the 2002 U.S. Open to enter his retirement with one final Grand Slam to his name.
I got all light-headed and happy when the U.S. women’s soccer team beat Brazil 2-1 in the 2004 Athens Olympics – a fitting swan song for the Old Guard (Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly and Brandi Chastain) as they passed the torch to the next generation.
And I almost got teary when the Ducks women’s soccer team beat UCLA 2-1 in the fall with Nicole Garbin’s thrilling game-winner in double overtime.
Sports for me is most fun when it unveils a deeper, more meaningful story line.
That’s why I was so touched by the tremendous act of courage demonstrated by a Portland Pilots distance runner last Friday at the NCAA West Regionals track meet.
The image that stuck with me when I left the track that evening was one of Portland’s Amie Dahnke in the women’s 5,000m race, pale cheeks flushed, rail-thin body wavering as she half-jogged and half-stumbled over the finish line – almost two minutes after Stanford’s Theresa McWalters’ first-place finish.
But the fact that Dahnke had even finished was a miracle in itself.
With five laps to go in the 12 1/2-lap 5,000m race, Dahnke had already fallen at least a half-lap behind everyone else. She was dead last by more than 100m, and she looked wearier by the meter.
At the 4,000m mark, I watched as Dahnke fell farther and farther behind the pack, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for her. She was running so slowly she seemed to practically shuffle. Her fists were clenched as she ran, her face was contorted into a grimace. She no longer appeared to be able to run between the lines. Instead, she swayed and wavered into the second lane and looked as if she didn’t even know she was there.
“I bet she’s gonna drop out,” I remarked to a fellow reporter, who nodded in agreement.
We watched as Dahnke approached the far curve closest to the athletes’ holding pen to see if she would stop running and walk off the track, just as a couple of others had done in the men’s 5,000m race 15 minutes earlier.
But to my surprise, she kept going. Her steps were small and measured, and each time she passed us, the pained expression on her face made it evident that she was struggling. But Dahnke kept running.
On the bell lap, everyone else lapped Dahnke, and my heart went out to her as she crossed the finish line where the other athletes stood around panting in exhaustion after having finished the race. I thought she’d just stop and throw in the towel right there.
But once again, Dahnke kept going.
She shuffled past all the bent over athletes. And it became evident that she was determined to complete the last lap even if it killed her.
Dahnke eventually clocked in at 17:52.78. To put that in context, McWalters finished the race in 16:04.92. Dahnke herself even qualified for the regional meet by running 16:51.55 at the Oregon Invitational a month ago.
But the magnitude of Dahnke’s courage didn’t quite hit me until after I’d left Hayward Field and was walking past the athletes’ cool-down fields to get home.
As I walked past the fields, I caught sight of a tall, lanky purple-and-white clad figure standing at a corner of the fields crying.
Dahnke was sobbing. She was just standing there, holding her hands to her face and crying in a manner that conveyed every ounce of the exhaustion and disappointment that I imagined she must have been feeling. One of her teammates came over and hugged her. And as I stood there watching Dahnke cry into that other girl’s shoulder, I was suddenly struck by a much deeper respect for her.
As a sports writer, my gut instinct is to always look for the winner because we’re trained to believe that’s what matters – get the quote from the guy who wins because he’s the one people want to read about in the paper tomorrow.
But at that moment it hit me that it must have been infinitely harder for Amie Dahnke to finish that race – to run that final lap knowing that everyone else was already done – than it had been for Galen Rupp to cruise to the tape triumphant earlier that evening.
Dahnke had staggered in so far behind the rest of the field that her result had ceased to matter. She didn’t have to finish that race. But she did anyway, even though she looked dangerously close to passing out throughout the last two laps.
She finished even though it took her just about everything she had.
And that to me is the stuff that real champions are made off.
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