BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 9 : Devers’ Horror Story Has a Happy Ending

BARCELONA — When an Olympic athlete says she hasn’t got “legs,” she usually means it figuratively. She’s not “legged up” for the contest.

Gail Devers came this close to meaning it literally. It wasn’t her sprinting legs she was going to be without, it was her legs, period. More precisely, her feet.

Nobody expected her to be able to win the Olympic 100 meters. Nobody expected her to be able to walk.

It was 1989. Gail Devers had been an intercollegiate hurdles champion and Olympic participant--she lost in the heats at Seoul in ’88. She alternated between hurdles and sprints. She was good at both. In fact, she was world class.

All of a sudden, she wasn’t. The things that happened to Gail Devers should have happened to Saddam Hussein.

It was like a horror movie. She was turning into Mr. Hyde. First, her legs knotted up. Her weight tumbled, then rose. Her memory wavered. “I lost vision in my left eye,” she told the world press Saturday as she relived the most horrific prelude to the Games any athlete ever endured. “I got involuntary shakes. I had three or four menstrual cycles a month. I was bleeding without reason.”

Her eyes began to bulge out of her head. The doctors were nonplussed.

“The worst things were the diagnoses,” she recalled. “One doctor told me I was in the wrong profession. I should stay out of the sun.

“Another doctor told me I just had athlete’s foot. Then, he lanced a blister in my toes. ‘My goodness!’ he said. ‘It’s full of blood!’ I told him: ‘I could have told you that--and I don’t have a medical degree!’

“It got worse. They gave me some over-the-counter drugs to cure my ‘athlete’s foot.’ But the blood blisters continued. The stench from my feet could be smelled clear across the room. I was too embarrassed to go out.

“I couldn’t walk. I would crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom. I would scratch my knees, and 20 minutes later, they would start to bleed. Then, the bleeding would go to my hands and face.

“One doctor told me I had bronchitis. ‘In my feet?!’ I asked him. I couldn’t believe this was happening.”

Finally, the problem was spotted. The bulging eyes, a suspicious goiter in the neck, pointed to the culprit--the thyroid.

She had Graves’ disease, a disorder of the thyroid, the gland that secretes thyroxine, and it is important in building energy levels in the human organism. Without it, you get drowsy, given over to lassitude.

Radiation treatment was indicated. “I was within one week of cancer when it was diagnosed,” Devers said.

“Now I take medication--I forget how it’s spelled--which makes my body think I have a thyroid when I don’t.”

The radiation put the thyroid out of action, Devers explained. She gets her hyperactivity out of a bottle now. But the earlier medications she took would have been more perilous. “I would have flunked the drug test,” she admitted.

The feet remained a problem. She finally got prescribed treatment. “The doctor told me I was within two days of having to have my feet amputated when they finally figured out how to deal with the problem.”

It was hard to connect this hair-raising--or more accurately hair-falling-out--history with the radiant, bubbly, chatty, cheerful character who took the victory stand as the Olympic gold medalist in the women’s 100 meters Saturday night.

“I couldn’t walk and now I can not only run but run fast!” she glowed.

And not only fast, but as the fastest woman in the world.

She surveyed the room. “If you have faith and believe, you can achieve miracles,” she told the media. “Because the last three years of my life have been a miracle.”

The women’s 100-meter race had a closer finish than a boardinghouse dinner table. Six athletes seemed to cross the finish line abreast.

You might think a heartwarming story like this would bring a heart tug to everyone involved, a triumph of the spirit, which is what the Olympics are supposed to be all about.

Not!

Gwen Torrence. who finished fourth, did not care for this happy ending. “Two of the three runners who finished ahead of me were not clean,” she complained darkly. She did not immediately identify the accused.

In the multilingual interview room, Devers’ coach (and Jackie Joyner’s husband), Bob Kersee, introduced an ancient Anglo-Saxon word into the chorus of tongues. “Anybody who thinks Gail Devers takes anything,” he exploded, “can kiss my ass!”

Gail Devers just smiled. She was happy to have her gold medal. She was even happier to have feet.