By Steve Sailer
08/02/2023
Ever wondered what a normal person would look like in a 100 meter sprint on the world stage?
Well the President of the Somali Athletics Foundation sent his niece to the World University Games this year. And let’s just say she want very fast. pic.twitter.com/2XFVEFZhc6
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) August 2, 2023
This reminds me of high school gym class when we had to run the high hurdles. Running was always the bane of my athletic career because I was extraordinarily slow. I was skinny and had decent form and was highly competitive, but I just was slow. I can recall several adult experts called in to answer the question of why I was so slow, staring in puzzlement at my lack of speed, and finally suggesting in defeat that I try to stride faster.
So, four of us lined up for the high hurdles. Two guys would obviously win, but I thought I could beat this fat kid for third place.
But he was pulling away from me at the first hurdle. Then, however, he took a catastrophic spill onto his face. I was a little worried that the poor guy might never walk again, but at least I had third place in the bag. Coming to the last hurdle, striding smoothly without a care in the world, I suddenly felt a mighty wind over my shoulder … and the fat guy blew past me.
But then he wiped out spectacularly on the last hurdle, which I then cleared and headed for the finish line. Just as I was about to throw my arms up in triumph over my third-place finish, I heard thundering footsteps over my shoulder as the bleeding fat kid was catching up to me.
But I beat him in a lean at the finish line.
I don’t recall voluntarily participating in a footrace in the half-century since.
In 1976, the dictator of Haiti, Baby Doc Duvalier, forgot to organize an Olympic team, so at the last second he picked a team consisting of runners and boxers from his friends and his Tonton Macoute goon squad to the Montreal Games.
They were memorably bad.
For example, in the first round, the Haitian boxer had only one punch, a roundhouse right like a drunk in a cowboy movie saloon brawl. The technically skilled American fighter thought this was hilarious and jabbed him at will. After a while the American got bored with punching the poor bastard whenever he felt like it, and started to show off and drop his fists to his waist and do the Ali Shuffle. At that point, the Haitian somehow connected with his roundhouse and floored the American showboat. The chastened American jumped up and pounded the Haitian into the canvas.
Or at least that’s what I recall from 47 years ago. I tried to look it up, and that appears to be what happened in the first round of the welterweight fight between Clint Jackson (USA) and Wesly Felix (Haiti), won by Jackson with a KO in round one. Although in my retelling of this anecdote I’ve always remembered the embarrassed American not as Jackson but as the more famous Howard Davis, who went on to win a gold and be voted the best boxer of the 1976 Olympics over Sugar Ray Armstrong, Leon Spinks, Michael Spinks, and Teófilo Stevenson. (In general, anecdotes I’ve remembered over several decades tend to be mostly accurate, but also enhanced like this one in one or more details to be punchier.)
From Wikipedia:
Charles [Olemus] competed at 10000 metres, and completed his qualifying heat in 42:00.11. He finished 14 minutes behind the heat winner Carlos Lopes of Portugal and 8.5 minutes behind Chris McCubbins of Canada who finished next to last. While he completed the last six laps alone on the track, officials argued whether he should be allowed to finish the course. Ultimately he was, which held up the entire track and field schedule by fourteen minutes.
Charles was one of the members of the notorious squad of Haitian long distance track and field athletes delegated to the Olympic Games by the Baby Doc Duvalier regime during the 1970s and 1980s, who gained fame by setting all-time worst times on the Olympics, many of which are still standing today. Other notable performers included Anilus Joseph who started his 1972 10000 metres qualifying heat in a sprint then dropped out when he was already a mile behind the leaders, Wilnor Joseph who covered the 800 metres with a time of 2:15.26 in 1976, and Dieudonne Lamothe who finished last at both the 5000 metres in 1976 and at the marathon race in 1984.
From the Los Angeles Times in 1986:
Dieudonne Lamothe finished an embarrassing last in the 1984 Olympic marathon, but no one knew he was running for his life — in borrowed shoes.
The Los Angeles crowd cheered politely as the Haitian staggered across the finish line that August afternoon. Television announcers made blithe comments about the sound of his name.
Lamothe was quickly forgotten as the marathon gave way to a Hollywood-style extravaganza that brought the Games of the XXIII Olympiad to a close.
But now, with the fall of Haiti’s feared Duvalier dynasty, Lamothe has told his story — an athlete’s tale of courage and determination.
Running in a friend’s shoes because he could not afford to buy his own, he forced himself to finish the marathon out of fear that the Duvalier officials accompanying the Haitian Olympic team would kill him if he quit.
After running 2:52 and last in the 1984 Olympic marathon (a few years later, the CEO of the firm where I worked ran a 2:59 in the Chicago Marathon; heck, Joe Strummer of The Clash ran a 3:20 in the 1983 London Marathon while living the rock star lifestyle), Dieudonné LaMothe finished the 1988 Olympic marathon at Seoul, remarkably, in 20th place, in a time of 2:16, less than eight minutes behind the gold medalist and ahead of 77 other finishers and a couple of dozen DNFs.
This would probably make a pretty good inspirational ending for a sports comedy movie about history’s worst track team: One of the buffoons keeps at and twelve years later somehow wills himself to a highly respectable result in the Olympics anchor event … which nobody ever notices except a handful of track nerds decades later.
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