Keeping Carl Lewis From Running Relay Took A Lot Of Erv

The United States lost a race Saturday night, but won a much more important victory: principle over greed. The team over the individual.

For this, we have a coach to thank. His name is Erv Hunt, and as soon as Donovan Bailey streaked across the finish line to win the 4x100-meter men’s relay for Canada, the second guesses began to rain down upon Hunt.

But Erv Hunt deserves our commendation, not our criticism.

Because Erv Hunt, bless him, chose morals over medals.

It was Hunt, the head coach of the U.S. track and field team, who refused to yield to outside influences and pressures and sentiment to allow Carl Lewis to run on the relay team for the purpose of becoming the all-time leader in gold medals.

It was Hunt who made the decision that coaches everywhere should have stood and applauded. It was Hunt who dared to take an enormous risk, but in so doing reinforced the nobility of doing what is right regardless of the consequences.

The team Hunt sent out fell behind right from the start and never could catch up. But even if Lewis had been running anchor instead of Dennis Mitchell, he wasn’t going to run down Bailey, the 100-meter gold medalist who was presented the baton and a lead of several strides. And if Lewis had been running, then that would have doubled the defeat.

It was the first time the United States has ever been beaten on the Olympic track for the gold in this event. Perhaps we shall now have to summon another dream team to make the world pay dearly for such insolence.

Erv Hunt made the correct decision. Carl Lewis did not deserve to run on a team for which he had never qualified nor with whom he had ever trained and practiced, and it needs to be on the record that here I severely second-guess myself. Originally, I thought the exception should be made for Lewis, the most exceptional track and field athlete of all time. After all, we grant privilege all the time, in every arena.

There is only one way to say this: I was wrong, as wrong as it is possible to be.

I finally realized this when a man from Spain patiently listened to my argument for Lewis - a 10th gold medal, something never done before, a Ruthian record - and finally, politely, he asked: “But a 10th for Carl comes at the expense of a first for someone else, no?”

As a matter of fact, yes. And to that there can be no rebuttal.

Lewis never should have insinuated himself into his blatant lobbying for the relay as soon as he had won the long jump. But he is hardly alone in the blame. He had powerful allies. A certain shoe company, it is said, exerted pressure. A certain television network salivated what the ratings would be if Lewis ran. Certain powerful members of the Olympics community were said to be calling in favors.

In the end, this deteriorated into a moral mess, and in many ways came to symbolize the Olympics that we have perverted into their present sorry state: avarice, ego, endorsements, ratings and all the other distasteful trappings that accompany the mutant Games we now celebrate.

Saturday morning, at a ceremony in which he received, along with Kerri Strug, the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award, Lewis said that all that matters to the country is winning the gold, and that so long as the United States does, then people won’t care about anything else.

And I thought: Please don’t let that be true.

But no, there is a drum beat of criticism for the coach who took principle over pampering. And there are some who will never forgive Hunt for excluding Lewis. They believe that winning excuses everything. They are wrong.

In retrospect, there was one way this could have been salvaged: Lewis should have volunteered to step aside. What a generous and noble and selfless act of sportsmanship that would have been. He would have been forever remembered as the man who won nine golds, it is true, but more, he would be remembered as the man who refused the chance to win a record 10th.

But that act was not forthcoming and, instead, it was left to the coach to make a decision, which is probably the toughest part of being a coach. And to Erv Hunt’s credit he never wavered, never hesitated.

He was a hurdler himself, played in the NFL for two seasons, and for the last 25 years has been the head track coach at Cal. He is described as sincere, genuine, a man not of flash or flamboyance but of substance. He demonstrated that Saturday night.

He lost his second leg runner when Leroy Burrell’s Achilles tendon didn’t improve. So Hunt selected one of the alternates, Tim Harden, a novice in his first Olympics. Actually, Harden didn’t do badly. He had to move the baton from one hand to the other to improve his hold for the exchange, but that is not what cost the United States the race.

When Jon Drummond, running lead-off, handed off to Harden, Canada was already in the lead. Harden also stepped on the lane line, which is an automatic disqualification. But the officials didn’t see it. Otherwise, the United States wouldn’t have had any kind of medal.

Predictably, to a man the quartet insisted that the best American team that could be assembled had been put on the track. Even if it hadn’t, the coach still did the right thing.

Perhaps we should do what has always been so hard for us to do in this country, and that is not become so overwhelmed by the mourning over finishing second that we forget to acknowledge the winners. Canada has a cracking good team, and it simply outran the Americans.

Nor was it a fluke - the Canadians’ time was the fastest non-American time for the event in its Olympic history.

Lewis had said Saturday morning that he would accept whatever Erv Hunt decided and would be content.

I hope he is. The coach did a brave thing. He did the right thing. He did what most of us would like to think we would do if we were caught in such a trying dilemma.

What separates Erv Hunt is, he did it.