by Larry EderMissed this one. Pat Butcher, from globerunner.org, wrote this piece, starting on the London 2012 mascots, to the late Charlie Francis, coach of Ben Johnson…provocative reading, as always from Butcher….
‘DON’T CRY, SWEETIE’
The
original name of the Atlanta Olympic mascot was Whatizit (what is it?),
later truncated to Izzy. Neither avatar was treated with anything like
respect. Ditto the London 2012 efforts, launched a couple of days ago.
Named Wenlock and Mandeville, they are more worthy of a similar
question to the 1996 version, ie WTFizit?
I am, mercifully, travelling in the Far East, so have been spared
the broader comments of our notoriously critical (and often funny)
national press on this matter, but I did catch a TV interview with
Sebastian Coe, CEO of London 2012, and he could barely suppress his
embarassment at having to talk positively about these ‘things’.
Of course, logos and mascots are easy targets, but London 2012 seems
to have got both designs, thus launches badly wrong. After the massive
success of Berlino at the IAAF World Athletics Champs in Berlin last
year, Wenlock and Mandeville (the two ‘things’) were bound to be a
disaster. Yet Lord Seb reckons they are going to raise £14m ($20m) for
the Games. Perhaps that was why he was so embarassed?
Charlie Francis, who died, aged 61 last week, was resolutely
unembarassed about his status of international doping hate figure. He
was, as I’m sure most people know, coach to the ‘disgraced’ (irony
intended) Ben Johnson.
Had Charlie lived another week, he would have had the satisfaction
of hearing about Tour de France winner and expulsee Floyd Landis‘
revelations about his own and other top cyclists’ drug-taking. I would
venture that we might have got another ‘told you so,’ out of Charlie.
I didn’t know Charlie as well as my colleagues Mike Hurst and Jim
Ferstle did. And if you haven’t read their reminiscences of Charlie, I
urge you to follow these links (see below).
But I was around Charlie a fair time during the mid-1980s, when Ben
was burning up the tracks, first, in pursuit of Carl Lewis, then
outrunning him, or as Charlie maintained Carl said, after losing to Ben
in the Seoul 100m final – “Ben out-juiced me again”.
That sort of thing, you had to take with a pinch, if not a pound of
salt from Charlie. An ex-Olympic sprinter himself, he was never slow to
implicate others in his amoral crusade. He maintained that he was a
realist, recognising very early that he had to take drugs himself, and
advise his athletes to do so, in order to maintain, ‘a level playing
field’.
Ben and Charlie were used as scapegoats for a whole generation, and
more, of undiscovered dope-takers. But the best, and most poignant
response to any revisionism on Charlie’s stance has been from Canadian
contemporary, middle-distance Olympian Doug Consiglio, who has recently
written, ‘years later I asked Charlie (who was then banned for life in
Canada) if he ever felt a need to apologize to people like me, who had
stayed clean, and were adversely affected by his actions. He told me
something to the effect that I am a naive young athlete who is stupid
to play by the rules. Thanks Charlie.’
But, Consiglio, like every one else who knew Charlie, recognised
that there was probably not a better sprint coach in the world. I’ve
been around athletes most of my life, as a club runner and as a
journalist. But I learned more about sprinting from Charlie’s book
Speed Trap than I ever gleaned from club mates and coaches, and the
dozens of sprint stars I’ve interviewed in the last 30 years.
On a personal note, Charlie could be very funny, perhaps without
intending to be. He may have been unembarassed by his role as a steroid
Svengali. But, as an inveterate smoker, he would be as embarassed as
any schoolboy if you caught him catching a toke anywhere near a track.
Charlie’s legendary loyalty to his athletes was never better
demonstrated when, at the Cologne track meeting prior to the 1987 World
Champs, a particularly naive photographer parked himself on the track,
barely 25 metres past the finish line – in Ben’s lane.
Inevitably, Johnson careered right into him, did a cartwheel, and ended
up spread-eagled on the track. Fortuitously, he was not badly injured.
But Charlie, furious, was out of his seat, with a reaction time
faster than Ben’s that day, and if the photographers’ league hadn’t
conspired to block his path after the first couple of swings, and get
the miscreant out of the stadium, and into a taxi to the airport
pronto, then Charlie would have punched his lights and his cameras out.
In the end, nothing so became Charlie as the manner of his passing.
As Mike Hurst reported, after a conversation with his widow Ange, among
Charlie’s final words to her were, “Don’t cry sweetie, it’s been a good
run”.
Now that, like the final word of a play about another fatally flawed figure, Cyrano de Bergerac, is what you call ‘panache’.
** http://downthebackstretch.blogspot.com/2010/05/funeral-for-friend.html)
