Bruins Stick Together Until Bitter End of 400 Meters

In their bunks, side by side, Danny Everett and Steve Lewis woke up to face the day. The day faced them back. It was ugly. The morning sky was Indiana’s fabled blue-gray. The window pane was wet. It does rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

The roommates from UCLA remained in their room. A day when they would try to make the U.S. Olympic track team was off to a false start. Everett, 21, turned to Lewis, 19, and told him the obvious. Too wet to set any world records today, he said. Too slick to be too quick. Better just run hard but safe. Better just get where we’re going. Destination: South Korea.

Lewis agreed. They stayed inside and focused on daytime television. They watched “Green Acres.” They watched “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They watched “The Young and the Restless.” They were the young and the restless.

Lewis thought about doing a little homework. He brought it with him from Los Angeles. He still had to read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for an English class. Everett, too, thought about school work. He had a thesis due soon on Africa from 1945 to the present. The track was not the only place they had to make the grade.

Teammates and rivals at the same time, Everett and Lewis mapped out strategy. They were entered two lanes apart in Wednesday night’s 400-meter run at the U.S. Olympic track trials. Only three quarter-milers would go from here to Seoul. This was it. The race of their lives. The Indy 400. Only they were friends, not enemies. They were in this thing together.

Alone in their room, they remembered some of what their UCLA coach, John Smith, told them of the Olympic trials and tribulations of 1972, when he and Wayne Collett, world-class sprinters and UCLA teammates, had to run the 400 against one another, both hoping to make it to Munich. They also remembered some of what Smith told them about the great Lee Evans, whose world-record clocking of 43.86 seconds at the 1968 Games in Mexico City has stood the test of time for 20 years.

Steve Lewis knew little about this.

“Before I was born,” he said.

The neon 44.11 with which Lewis lit up the scoreboard at Saturday’s semifinals here gave warning to the world that Evans’ record was within reach. And this was at sea level. This was Indianapolis, where the land was flat and the air thick. If the weather stayed dry and hot, conditions would be perfect for somebody to break down that 44-second barrier, maybe even cross Evans’ 43.86 right off the page.

If one Bruin couldn’t do it, another could. Everett and Lewis ran 1-2 in the National College Athletic Assn. championships. And Buckeye Butch Reynolds could do it, too, even though he left Ohio State before the NCAAs, left it so he could concentrate on making Lee Evans’ record go poof.

Together they took their stances, bunched together in the middle lanes. Pulses raced before the runners did. Lewis got jumpy and jumped the gun to a false start. He was mature for 19, but this one was for the Korean airplane ticket. This one was for the old gang from Banning High School in Los Angeles and for all his friends from Fremont, Calif., who followed Lewis when he was a little older and much too preoccupied with his girlfriend to continue his sprint workouts outdoors.

Everett also was running for the folks back home in L.A. He remembered how he used to beg his mother, Grace McMillan, not to come to his Fairfax High School meets and embarrass him. “They were just tiny little high school dual meets with nobody in the stands. It’s kind of embarrassing when you run by and look up, and your mother is sitting up there all by herself screaming for you to win and looking at you with those big sad puppy eyes if you lose,” Everett said, smiling at the mere imagination of such a scene.

Bang! The gun went off, and there was no more time for memory lane, just time for the fast, curved, Mondo-surfaced lanes where the fastest 400 field of all time came together.

Everett and Lewis came flying around the final curve, flanking Reynolds. Time for one last kick. For some reason, though, over the final 50 meters, Everett’s concentration broke. Even he couldn’t explain why. As for Lewis, he felt cramping in his right leg, around the hamstring. There was tightness. But he kept churning toward the tape.

Reynolds got there first. His time: 43.93, second-fastest in history, fastest at sea level. Everett got there second. His time: 43.98. Only once before had two men broken 44 in the same race, but Reynolds and Everett did it here, on a sloppy track. And Lewis? He got there third. His time: Never mind his time. Hardly matters. He made the Olympics, that’s his time. OK, so it was 44.37. Just so you know.

At trackside, John Smith was tickled blue. Two of his Bruins were in the Olympic 400, and together, with Reynolds, they had shook down some thunder. “Americans are striking fear in the rest of the world. The rest of the world must take heed now,” the UCLA assistant coach said.

Only the weather prevented a world record, Smith believed. A little wetness with a little nervousness thrown in. “Steve Lewis, a newcomer--young and inexperienced and fast as hell,” Smith said of his younger protege. “Just a sheer gut runner. I think the pressure got to him today, but he’s young and someone to reckon with. He could win the gold, 19 or no 19.”

Lewis thought so, too. “I feel others may feel more pressure than I do,” he said. “Age is nothing. It’s all in a person’s head, what he can do. In his head and his heart and his legs. Anything is possible for me.”

He went off to finish his homework.

As for Everett, there’s one more thing he will deal with:

Mama in Korea.

Grace McMillan can come now. It’s OK. Danny doesn’t mind anymore. The Olympics is not some high school dual meet. This is the real thing. “When I run in Seoul, she’ll be up there in those stands.”

Yeah, but this time you won’t be able to hear her.

“Oh, I’ll hear her,” Everett said. “Everybody will hear her. She’ll outshout Korea.”