HURSDAY,DEC.6,2001
FROM THE FRONT
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 5A
Wiley: Track star gets gold in everything but Olympics
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
pull the United States Olympic team from the Moscow Games if the Soviets did not leave Afghanistan by Feb. 20.
Wiley was one of hundreds of U.S. athletes who made many sacrifices to get to Moscow, and he was shocked by Carter's threat.
After graduat-
After graduating from KU in 1978. Wiley moved to Houston to prepare for the 1980 Olympic Trials. He took several part-time jobs to support his son
"...the U.S. Olympic team is not part of the military."
Clifford Wiley 1990 Olympiad
and wife, who was in medical school at the University of Houston, while trying to train at a world-class level. He would quit a job if employers wouldn't let him take time off for track meets.
And some jobs just didn't work out, Wiley recalled with amusement.
He was in a manager's training program at a fast-food franchise. The first day, he burned his hand on one of the fryers.
The next day, he was carrying a large trash can to the dumpster behind the building. As he began to empty it, he fell into the dumpster. When he returned covered in mayonnaise and trash, Wiley was told by the owner, "Don't come back."
One steady source of revenue was the local hospital, where he would go on occasion to donate a pint of blood for $25.
Getting ahead of his competition on the track was difficult, too.
He had failed to advance out of the semifinal round at the U.S. national meet. It seemed unlikely he would fare better at the Olympic Trials two weeks later.
Clyde Duncan Sr., his coach in Houston, diagnosed what Wiley was doing wrong in the 200-meter dash.
Wiley took Duncan's advice and made the team, finishing second in 20.52 seconds.
meet each other.
"He had a habit in the first 100 meters. He'd coast like it was a 400." Duncan said. "If he'd run a complete race, it would speak for itself."
"I got hot on the right day." Wiley said.
Olympic flag.
Some athletes even considered sneaking into the Soviet Union from a neutral country and competing under the
Wiley and the others who made the team were convinced that even though the U.S. Olympic Committee had voted to support Carter's decision to boycott, something would happen allowing them to go to Moscow.
Olympic tags. But the White House warned that anyone going to Moscow would be stripped of his or her passports and not allowed back into the United States.
When the deadline passed for countries to submit their lists of competitors two weeks before the Games, Wiley finally admitted to himself that it was over.
All that was left was to ask why they were staying home.
"The boycott was a pretty misguided policy. Our business here."
Misdirected retaliation
interests in Afghanistan have always been. "It was a great way to make the Soviets miserable," said Philip Schrodt, KU professor of political science and an expert in international relations and foreign policy. "But there was no close cultural affinity, or natural resources, or any reason the U.S. would ever want to get
involved in Afghanistan."
Afghanistan wasn't the only factor leading to the boycott, Schrodt said. Iranian militants had taken control of the U.S. embassy in Teheran on Nov.4, 1979.
Wiley finished the 1981 season ranked No. 1 in the world at 400 meters by Track and Field News. He was a gold medal candidate for the 1984 Olympics, but injury ended his hopes.
Fifty U.S. officials were held hostage for the next 444 days. Responding firmly to the Soviets in Afghanistan
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
He won U.S. championships in 1981 and 1982 in the 400-meter dash and was ranked No.1 in the world in 1981.
the 400 meters.
He joined Steve Simmons, with whom he had worked on the 1977 World Cup team. Simmons headed a job program for developing Olympic athletes. Simmons helped Wiley get a job with Trans America, the insurance giant that would insure the Los Angeles Olympics.
He moved to San Jose, Calif., in 1983 to get ready for the Los Angeles Games.
"Have a bad day at the office, come home and kick the dog. Can't stop the Ayatollah Khomeini, so you try to do something to stop the Russians."
Simmons also was coaching Kasheef Hassan,a former NCAA champion at Oregon State, where Simmons had previously coached.
would help Carter divert attention from what was happening in Iran. Schrodt said.
coached. Wiley and Hassan pushed each other in a way Wiley hadn't been pushed before, and it was working.
working Simmons recalled, "We had practice sometimes and I had to say, 'Stop. You guys are running too good.'"
"Have a bad day at the office, come home and kick the dog," he said. "Can't stop the Ayatollah Khomeini, so you try to do something to stop the Russians."
Sixty-one other nations, including Japan and West Germany, joined the U.S. in the boycott.
The United Kingdom supported the U.S.decision verbally, but chose to send its athletes to the Games.
Wiley did get to run in Russia during the summers of 1979 and 1981 — while the Soviets were still in Afghanistan — in dual meets between the United States and the Soviet Union. He won the 400 meters and ran on the winning 4x400 relay in 1981 at Leningrad.
Dreams dashed, again
Wiley should have been a gold-medal favorite in 1984 as well, only at a new distance —
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Philip Schrodt KU professor of political science
Cliff Wiley acknowledges the crowd before the start of the 400 meters during the 1981 U.S.-U.S.S.R. dual meet in Leningrad, U.S.S.R. American officials allowed U.S. athletes to compete in the Soviet Union in 1979 and 1981 but not at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Wiley had all the pieces in place to make a run at the gold medal: a good job, a great coach and a talented training partner.
He won the 1983 Pan American Games gold medal, dominated the 1984 U.S. indoor circuit and won big races over all other top-ranked runners, including fellow American Alonzo Babers.
Then, at a practice session in
April, he pulled a hamstring muscle and missed the Olympic Trials. His Olympic dreams were over. Babers won the gold medal in Los Angeles later that summer. Makinos of a champion
Wiley may not have achieved his ultimate goal, but he had climbed to the top of the track world despite having to overcome a difficult childhood in a tough Baltimore neighborhood.
caused Wiley to be placed in a sanatorium and miss an entire year of elementary school. When he came back, he failed 5th grade.
A bout with tuberculosis
As a special education student, Wileyvid.he had a
When KU followed the order, Wiley sued the NCAA and KU, receiving a temporary injunction to compete from a federal district judge in Topeka. The NCAA appealed the decision and told KU officials that they would be forced to forfeit any points Wiley scored at the NCAA and Big 8 meets.
However, NCAA rules forbade anyone from taking money above the value of a full scholarship, so the NCAA ordered KU to declare Wiley ineligible.
Wiley continued to run and the NCAA kept its word, stripping him of five individual Big 8 titles and KU of two team championships.
"We had practice sometimes and I had to say, 'Stop. You guys are running too goo r."
"I never missed a meal in my life, but I didn't come from a wealthy family and lived in some pretty tough neighborhoods," he said. "But I had never, ever had to deal with the kind of stress that I had to deal with going through that whole situation."
He qualified for a Basic Equal Opportunity Grant, now called a Pell Grant, which helped pay for living expenses and travel to and from home during school breaks.
sure he had a hard time with language and for a while couldn't even figure out why sometimes "the" is pronounced with a long vowel sound and others with a short vowel sound.
Wiley wrote his name throughout the KU record book and set world records in the indoor 300-yard dash and as a member of the U.S. 1977 World Cup 4x100 relay. But despite being the star of the team, he often butted heads with KU coach Bob Timmons.
Timmons wanted Wiley to run the 4x400 relay, in addition to the
His athleticism earned him a full athletic scholarship to KU as one of the nation's most prized high school track recruits. Because of his modest family background, Wiley needed more than the $15 a month his athletic scholarship provided for expenses.
Steve Simmons
Wiley's California coach
— and get through college-prep courses in high school.
The same determination that helped him win races helped him overcome his learning disability
Wiley was the team's top spinner but thought that at smaller meets, someone else could run the relays. Too many races were beginning to affect the quality of his performances, he
Timmons gave Wiley a one-semester scholarship. A second semester scholarship was contingent on not causing trouble about the relay.
100- and 200-meter dashes and the 4x100 relay every weekend.
The conflict came to a head when Timmons went to Baltimore during the summer and told Wiley to run all four events.
"Athletes would come to town for visits, and they wouldn't even bring them by to see me," Wiley said. "It was almost like, maybe you've contracted leprosy."
That season, Wiley felt like an outcast.
thought.
The lawsuit and the conflict with Timmons caused Wiley to rethink what track meant to him.
"Yeah, we were successful as a team, but I didn't really feel that I was successful." Wiley said. "I realized I also had some goals that I had forgotten about once I got to KU."
Already one of the nation's top college sprinters, Wiley got his chance to prove himself on an international stage later that summer.
Steve Simmons, then coach of the 1977 World Cup team getting ready to compete in Dusseldorf, West Germany, picked Wiley for the 4x100 relay.
Simmons had never seen anyone run the difficult third leg like Wiley.
Running the third leg means moving very fast and contorting one's body at a 45-degree angle toward the middle of the track while going around the final turn.
"I liked his personality," Simmons said. "He was calm, mature. It's hard to judge distance when you're running sideways."
Wiley was shocked he had been selected. He was the youngest member of the team and had been picked ahead of runners with far more impressive resumes.
And because the third leg doesn't hold the glory of coming down the final stretch to the roars of a crowd, it takes a special mentality to want to do it well.
He showed his appreciation by helping the team set a world record at Dusseldorf — the only record broken at the meet. The performance cast Wiley into the national spotlight.
"They show that bad boy on TV at ballet time of a football game
— live all over the country."
Wiley recalled. "I'm a celebrity, and I never heard anything about that one-semester scholarship again."
Moving On
Moving on Wiley took his strong will to succeed from the athletic arena to the classroom and courtroom.
As the Games were underway in Moscow, Wiley was settling into his first year of law school at KU. Wiley soon learned law
school was going to be as much of a challenge as going to the Olympics.
"The first day of class, the professor says. Look to your left, look to your right. One of you won't be here in three years." Wiley recalls. "The two guys looking at me, they see me, and they kind of laugh and relax.
"He was going to be in the thick of the race, whatever the distance. That doesn't always mean winning, but being right there in the thick of the battle." Bob Timmons Former KU track coach
'We know this guy ain't going to make it.'
Coping with the disappointment
"And I'm saying to myself, 'I'm not really sure they're not right,' " he said.
That team has been called the greatest in U.S. track and field history.
Like many first-year law students, Wiley struggled to get through all the work.
"He was going to be in the thick of the shirt, whatever the distance," Timmons said. "That doesn't always mean winning, but being right there in the thick of the battle."
On that team were long jumper Bob Beamon and Dick Fosbury, who revolutionized the high jump by flopping over
But Wiley found that running helped him survive.
have a good case, evidence is on your client's side, and for some reason, you still don't win."
During the 2000 Olympic Trials in Sacramento, Wiley took a bus ride with other former Olympians to Lake Taheo, Nev., to celebrate the 1968 Trials.
"Going out and jogging and doing workouts, that was something I just did," he said.
Now an independent lawyer in Kansas City, Kan., working mostly on civil cases, Wiley says practicing law can be more frustrating than running track.
Wiley does relive his disappointment when he's around Olympic champions.
In track, he said, "If you did the work and you're prepared, and if you're lucky, chances are you're going to be as successful as you can be. In law, you can
Since hanging up his spikes, Wiley has coached high school runners, worked with KU sprinters, was an assistant coach for the 1993 World Championships team, and spent time as an administrator with USA Track and Field.
Timmons, his old KU coach, said the same toughness Wiley displayed butting heads with him made him successful.
"I'm on the bus with my three national championships, but these guys are talking about the experience of being at
the bar on his back, as well as former KU greats Jim Ryun and Al Oerter.
It made Wiley think what the 1980 team might have done and what he missed by not competing at the Olympics.
the Games," Wiley said. "They have a kinship that they'll never lose."
Wiley, who often talks on the phone with his mother in Baltimore before he heads to court, first learned from her that the United States began bombing Afghanistan. Later, his brother called and reminisced about how Afghanistan cost Cliff his chance for an Olympic medal.
He's not bitter — he says he even voted for President Carter that fall — but he knows he was enlisted in a battle where athletes didn't belong.
"I guess we were the last major salvo of the Cold War," Wiley said.
Contact Norton at 864-4810
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