Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [16]
ON THE STRENGTH of my performance I got invited to the Olympic tryouts at Randalls Island, New York. Torrance raised some spending money for me and the city merchants gave me a suitcase with TORRANCE TORNADO stenciled on the side. (I covered it with masking tape because I didn’t want the other athletes to give me a hard time.) They also contributed shaving gear, clothing. Since my dad worked for the railway, I got a year’s pass good for one round trip anywhere in America on the Southern Pacific.
Still, the thought of going to New York worried me. I kept saying, “Pete, it’s not fair that you can’t go with me. I might get lost.”
“It’s time you went out on your own anyway,” he said.
We left after dark. At dinner I sat in the dining car, eating off of fine china on a white tablecloth, and I remembered myself a few years earlier in the San Francisco train yard, freezing cold and miserable, looking through the windows of a departing train at the happy people, dreaming it was me.
Now my dream had come true.
I ARRIVED IN New York during the city’s hottest week in many years. We stayed in Manhattan, in prerented rooms. The whole adventure excited me, except for the reaction of the local papers. I’d grown used to seeing my name in print back home, and I was annoyed that the East Coast press had never heard of me. I wrote a letter to Pete that read: “In the papers here they’ve have picked the place winners for Sunday’s 5000 meter. (1) Lash, (2) Bright, (3) Lochner, (4) Ottey, (5) Deckard. They don’t even know I’m running. But if I can cope with the heat, I’ll beat Bright and give Lash the scare of his life—and then I’ll make the print.” I signed it, “Brother headed for Berlin.”
I TOOK A boat to Randalls Island, warmed up, and then lay in the shade—not that it mattered, it was hot there, too. Ten minutes before the event, I stretched, loosened up, and mentally reviewed my plan. I didn’t think I could beat Lash—he was the world-record holder in the two-mile—but I just had to get second or third place to make the Olympic team.
When the race started I did just what Pete had taught me: slip in behind the leaders as close as I could, stay on their inside, and relax. Being out in front can make a runner tense. You’re alone and can’t see anybody. I liked to run just behind the leader and look at his feet. If he ran a foot from the curb, I’d place myself three inches from the curb so that psychologically I’d run a shorter mile. Strategy was my game. I stayed constantly alert to who ran besides me, to who might box me in. If I competed against a guy everyone thought would beat me, I wanted to be clever, so when I trained I’d speed up for fifty yards on every lap and then slow down to the regular pace. When I did it in the real race, I forced my competition to catch up every time I pulled ahead. Eventually it bushed him, and by the final lap I’d have it going away.
At first we stayed packed together. I was maybe tenth of sixteen runners. Bright was in front of me. We had plenty of distance to cover, so I took it easy. After about a mile and a half some guy collapsed from the heat and we all jumped over him. Eventually, that happened to Bright; the intense sun was not kind to fair-skinned, freckle-faced, sandy-haired fellows. I pulled alongside and urged him to stick it out, but Bright had developed blisters from running a 10,000-meter race a week earlier, and his pain was unbearable. I admired him for trying. I desperately wanted to beat him, but