Summer Olympics 2000 1,500 runner not just another pretty face

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Tuesday, September 19
1,500 runner not just another pretty face
By Jeff Hollobaugh
Special to ESPN.com

In a world where women's sports grows in importance daily, and where it seems marketing is what sport is all about, we have to expect that the media will focus its attention on beauty instead of achievement from time to time. The public wants it.


	Suzy Favor Hamilton is looking to land her first Olympic medal.

After all, ours is the culture which has created Playboy, the Supermodel, and Baywatch, not to mention Jerry Springer and Survivor. Merit isn't our prime interest; if it were, we would see the National Spelling Bee on prime time, followed by women's powerlifting championships. Instead, when we tune into women's sports, we see sports occasionally, glamour more often.

We see Anna Kournikova everywhere, for instance. She has done a lot for tennis, some say, but wouldn't it be nice if she had done a lot of winning?

In track and field, we have Suzy Favor Hamilton. I have met few men who wouldn't agree that she is drop-dead gorgeous. She models. She has a swimsuit calendar. She even has a website (suzyfavorhamilton.com) with photo pages.

I imagine the same people who complain about Kournikova will start to complain once they hear more about Favor Hamilton as we approach the Sydney Games. We will all be seeing her on TV, after all. The commentators will mention her swimsuit calendar.

Yet track is blessed by Favor Hamilton's presence, and I am not taking an aesthetic viewpoint. I am referring to the fact that she wins. Right now the Wisconsin native is on top of the world in the 1,500 meters, by virtue of her stunning 3:57.40 victory in Oslo.

Only one American, Mary Slaney, has ever run faster. And despite Favor Hamilton's loss to Regina Jacobs in the Olympic Trials (both ran incredibly), she is considered by many to be a leading contender for a medal at the Olympics.

A long time coming
This rise to the top is something that many people predicted of Favor Hamilton years ago. She was a star schoolgirl. She won 11 state high school titles, and more USA Junior titles than any other runner. She certainly had more articles written about her that used the word "wunderkind" than any other runner.

She came to Wisconsin bearing the heavy pressure of transforming herself into a collegiate star at a campus just 100 miles from where she grew up. And she produced, winning an unprecedented 23 Big 10 titles and nine NCAA titles.

After college, she wanted to move away from the glare of all the attention in Madison. Through it all, she had to bear the pressure of her beauty, in a culture where all too often young beautiful women believe the message that being beautiful is an end in itself. Favor Hamilton wanted more. She wanted an Olympic medal.

When things didn't go her way in her post-collegiate years, she stuck it out, rather than giving up. "I remember thinking, well now it gets easier," she says. "Those were the few years that the running didn't go that well. I realized it never gets any easier; it only gets harder. That changed a lot for me."


	Anna Kournikova isn't always admired solely for her playing ability.

I remember hearing catty comments from other top female runners, resentful of the attention that Favor Hamilton got from the media. Yet I pull out my reference books to remind myself that those runners never came close to 3:57.40.

To get there, Favor Hamilton had to go back to the drawing board, returning to Madison and the coaching of Peter Tegen. Some would call that "swallowing her pride." For Favor Hamilton, then 29, it was simply a great move. She says, "Ever since I've been back in Madison, each year has been another progression for me. All the failures I've had in my career-not making finals, not doing well at the Olympics-those have only made me a better and stronger athlete. Without the failures, I would not be where I am today."

She wouldn't quit
As a journalist, I'm hard-pressed to think of an athlete who has weathered so many reasons to quit: lack of success, injuries, temptations from other careers, the resentments of some of her fellow athletes, and family tragedy. But she wouldn't quit.

"I never was thinking of giving up," she explains. "I knew I was going to make it. I always felt I had a lot of time. But when I had the [Achilles] injury [in early 1999] I realized that I had better do it now, or there may not be another chance. The injury changed me."

Then, following the surgery, Tegen put her on a distance running program, and suddenly she burned more miles than ever before. She flourished, hitting personal bests in the 3000, 5000, and now the 1500. "I could run these distances longer and faster each week. I had never done that kind of base training in my life. I can handle rounds, I can handle workouts. Knowing I have a second chance to accomplish the dreams and the goals I've set is a gift. I look at it so differently now. I have this ability and I don't want to waste it."

Then, last year, her brother Dan committed suicide, a tragedy that shook Favor Hamilton deeply and steeled her resolve to reach the top. "You just don't know when things are going to be taken away from you," she says. "That's carried over to my running."

And now she is on her way to Sydney as part of her third Olympic team. She couldn't be in better shape, mentally or physically. She knows her big Oslo win doesn't guarantee her a medal. She knows she will have to run the races of her life just to make it to the finals, and then she will have to run that race she has always dreamed about.

"I'm really at the best point I've ever been in my career," she explains. "I can't wait until the challenge is upon me. I really want more than anything to be on that medal stand and I want to prepare myself as best I could to be ready for that. I've really done a good job of not peaking for the Trials and not even peaking for Oslo. I don't feel like I've peaked at all yet.

"This is definitely the most fun I've ever had in this sport. I'm still having the time of my life. I can't even think about retiring. This sport is too much fun. As long as I'm on top, I want to keep running as long as I can."

That would be great for the sport, and for all the beautiful young girls who aspire to be much more than just another pretty face.

Jeff Hollobaugh, former managing editor of Track and Field News, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached by e-mail at michtrack@aol.com.

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