By Bud Collins
Boston Globe, ESPN
Another Olympics has sped by, stirring warm memories of a
golden 10.3 seconds I shared with a man called "Bones" six decades
ago. He did the running, I did the rooting from
the cheap seats among a throng of 83,000 in London's Wembley
Stadium.
The world had waited 12 years for restoration of the Games in
1948, and no one dreamed of this day more than the skinny "Bones,"
a guy built like a coat rack whose straight name was William
Harrison Dillard.
Nevertheless, it wasn't supposed to be his day. Standing atop
the victory podium, a gold medal dangling from his neck (immediate
successor to Jesse Owens as the world's fastest human) Dillard
couldn't help but think he was in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
Yes, he was an Olympic champion, inspired by the illustrious
Owens who came from the same east Cleveland neighborhood. But he
hadn't set out that season to capture the 100 meter
prize. And "Bones" couldn't have imagined being
in Beijing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his
startling triumph. But he was: a spry
86-year-old, courtesy of President Dick Durst
and alma mater as he should have been, a predecessor of Usain
Bolt.
Hurdling was his shtick, and he stood out as the best ever to
come along, holding all the world records. He
was practically conceded Olympic gold in the 110 meter
hurdles.
It didn't happen that way though. In one of
the strangest, most improbable twists in Olympic annals, Dillard
was blanked in the hurdles at the trials, yet barely got on the
boat to London as a sprinting spare tabbed for a spot in the 400
meter relay.
Growing up on the Baldwin Wallace campus, I started in
journalism as a paper boy with a Cleveland Plain Dealer
route. One of my customers was the college track
coach, effusive, bow-tie flaunting Eddie Finnigan, who didn't mind
talking sports to a little kid. Me.
Eddie was particularly jubilant in telling me in 1941 he'd
landed Harrison Dillard to be the centerpiece of his
team. Really? It seemed a bit
much for tiny BW. After all Dillard was the
state schoolboy champ in high and low hurdles, and Ohio State
wanted him.
"I wanted Ohio State, too," Dillard says,
"because Jesse Owens had gone there. But I got
cold feet. It was so big and 140 miles away from
home. BW was only an hour away "small" friendly,
and Eddie was very persuasive."
Those sophomore feet turned hot for BW in
1943 (freshmen weren't eligible in that day), as he won everything
in sight, indoors and outdoors. His tour de
force was powering BW to the Ohio Conference crown by taking the
100 and 220 yard dashes, the high and low hurdles and anchoring the
triumphant 880 yard relay team. And then " poof!
" he was gone, already drafted into the U.S. Army, but on a weekend
pass.
Just another GI vanished into the war, Dillard was soon
shipped to Europe as an infantryman.
Would we see him again? Coach Finnigan and I worried about
him, an extraordinarily bright, poised young man of quality as well
as a potential world-beater. The expression
wasn't around then, but "Bones" was cool.
For almost two years nothing was heard of
him. "He'll come back," the coach would tell me,
"and he'll take us to the Olympics." Finnigan knew I wanted to be a
sports writer, but talk of an Olympics while World War II raged was
heady stuff, difficult for a 14-year-old to
grasp.
As the war was wearing down, we learned that Pfc Dillard had
survived heavy combat on the Italian front, chasing the Germans
northward on the peninsula. He would be
returning to Berea and college, and I would be chronicling his
feats for the weekly Berea Enterprises' 5 bucks a week for writing
and laying out the sports page.
Dillard, unbeaten indoors in 1946-47-48, had a strange winter
training ground: Beech Street in Berea. Coach Finningan would place
two hurdles on the pavement and send the balletic "Bones" through
his fluid paces also playing traffic cop to make sure his star
wasn't fallen.
Snowfall made it more difficult, a retreat to the college's
aged gym with room for only one hurdle. There
Dillard departed from one end of the basketball court, glided over
the barrier and crashed into mats at the far
end. Again and again as the coach prayed with
every crash. No worries. His
man, slight but so loose and limber, was up to whatever primitive
practice conditions were available. How he could
fly over those obstacles.
But, for whatever reason that he still can't fathom, he wasn't
up to the U.S. Olympic trials. Despite his world
record-holding status as a shoo-in, he flunked the final, knocking
over the first three hurdles, left staring sadly at the backs of
his rivals.
Two weeks before the trials, my pal Bob Beach, editor of the
college newspaper, the Exponent, decided, "We've got to be there
(London) covering "Bones" winning the gold." To
me. a BW freshman, it seemed impossible. But
Bob convinced me that we could use our meager
savings, beg and borrow from parents and relatives, and somehow
pool enough funds to make it. We bought tickets
on an ex-troop ship that lazily crossed the Atlantic in nine days
from New York to Southampton. Also splurged on
the most expensive seats on the finish line for the day of the
hurdles. Otherwise all we could afford was huge
Wembley Stadium's distant daily general admission section.
Jolted by Dillard's flop in the trials that ended his 82 race
winning streak, Beach and I reconsidered our
debts. Should we go anyway? No gold, but, still,
"Bones" would be in London, on the team.
Fortunately, he and Coach Finnigan had decided to also enter him in
the 100 meter eliminations. If he finished as
high as fourth, there would be a place for him on the 400 meter
relay team, and a probable gold.
A day before his hurdles collapse, he came in third in the
100. That meant he would represent the U.S. in
that event, too. A very long shot, especially
considering that Mel Patton of Southern California, possessing the
world record, headed the American sprinters.
But it was a shot. So we kept our boat
tickets, and hoped Dillard might get a bronze. Finnigan's prophecy
of five years before, that we would ride "Bones" to the Olympics,
was coming true.
London, still recovering from the war, suffering bomb damage
and continuing rationing of food, gasoline, clothing and just about
everything else, was existing, nevertheless, in a period called
"austerity." The famous lights of Piccadilly
Circus were turned off to save electricity, and black marketeers
and hookers were hustling for dollars, appropriately, in the
darkness. Restaurant food was pretty awful and limited (greatly
improved over the last 30 years), and Beach and I learned to drink
tea with milk and sugar which could quench hunger.
But the people were welcoming, thrilled that the world was
coming together with the Olympics in their
backyard. Nothing fancy like today, however. For
openers, Lord Burghley, a British athlete at
Berlin in 1936, read the Olympic oath, declared, "Let the
Games begin!", and the Olympic era was
re-connected.
Dillard zipped through the heats commandingly into the final
along with the other two Yanks, Barney Ewell and the favorite, Mel
Patton.
A lovely July day greeted the six finalists as they took their
lanes on the cinder track. We were so far away,
straining to see as the gun went off. I'm sure
Bob and and I held our breath for the 10.3 seconds the winner
took. But who was he? They
were a blur at the finish, "Bones" right up there, we
thought. Ewell was bounding about in what seemed
an ominous victory dance, thinking he'd won? Or
trying to influence the judges?
"I felt the tape on my chest," Dillard remembers. "I thought I
won. Lloyd LaBeach of Jamaica, who finished third, told Ewell,
"Bones" won it, Barney. But there was a long
wait for the decision. It was the first Olympics
to use a photo finish. I made it by 20 inches over Barney."
The wait seemed interminable. Maybe a half
hour. Then the public address announcer: "Result
of the 100 meter dash, first, H. Dillard, United States of
America."
We didn't care about the rest. Not in
Ewell's league as dancers, we tried anyway. This
was sweet redemption for Dillard. Prior to the trials, during a
crowded civic dinner in his honor at a Cleveland hotel, he got
carried away. Called to the microphone,
self-effacing "Bones" uncharacteristically promised to win the
hurdles and bring gold back to Cleveland as Jesse Owens had done in
1936.
But he made Olympic history anyway as a champion shut out in
his specialty, then shifting gears to dig unexpected
gold. Four years later he
reasserted his greatness as a hurdler, taking
the gold in
Helsinki.
After seeing him from afar on the podium, we (Bob and I
and BW teammate Dale Lucal) were determined to shake his
hand. We asked for the dressingroom, and were
politely given directions. At the door stood a large bobby.
"We're friends of Mr. Dillard," said I hopefully.
"Go right in, gentlemen," said he with a
smile. Imagine that today.
Calm as ever "Bones" handed over the medal for
inspection. It was like holding the Hope
Diamond, and Finnigan glowed like a gem.
Nervously Beach dropped it and it rolled across the concrete floor
with five of us in pursuit. Its owner was the first to scoop
it. Harrison Dillard, after all, was the world's
fastest human.