Back On Track, Everett Kicks Up His Heels

Running fast used to be something Danny Everett could take for granted. It was something he could always do. He’d step on the track and, more often than not, beat most anyone who challenged him.

An NCAA championship in the 400 meters at UCLA. A bronze medal in the Olympics at the age of 21. Among the favorites for the gold four years later. Everything was coming so easily, so naturally - until a hot, August day in Barcelona.

It was then that Everett learned the identity of his toughest foe yet: his own body. First a partially torn achilles tendon, then an infection, then a complete tear - all in a span of a little more than a year.

Now, just the mere act of running is a thrill for Everett because for the longest time, he couldn’t even do that, let alone think about winning a race.

“I could barely walk,” he said.

That’s why April 14 was such an important date for Everett. He ran the 400 that day at the Mount SAC Relays at Walnut, Calif. his first open 400 in nearly three years. He finished second in 45.91 seconds.

“For somebody who’s had three operations on his achilles, I think that’s remarkable,” said Joe Douglas, Everett’s coach with the Santa Monica Track Club. “This is a young man who has come a long way.”

Everett’s troubles date to August 1992, when he was running in the semifinals of the 400 at the Olympics.

He had finished first at the U.S. trials at 43.81 - a personal best - and owned the world indoor record of 45.02. He had won the bronze medal at Seoul in 1988 and was looking for the gold at Barcelona. He was, it seemed, in the prime of his career.

Then, in the middle of the race, Everett felt a stabbing pain in his right heel. He limped to the finish line, completing the race in an agonizingly slow 56.61, and soon learned he had suffered a 90-percent separation of his achilles tendon. The tendon still was attached to the heel, but barely.

Doctors reattached it that fall and operated on his other heel, which had bothered him since his college days. Everett recovered enough to run a 45.7 relay leg in the spring of 1993, but his comeback was short-lived.

The tendon became infected later that year, and then it ripped completely while Everett was crossing a street, sending him back for another operation.

His life has been one long rehabilitation ever since - tedious, painful and often frustrating.

“Joe and I have been taking it slow,” Everett said. “I’m getting good workouts now. Now it’s just having the courage to step onto the track. It’s a lot tougher than what I realized.”

“It’s easy in practice running behind Steve and having him pull you around,” Everett said. “But when you’re out there on your own, you feel the isolation and the pressure of having to go out there and compete again.”At least now his workouts involve running.

That wasn’t the case when his comeback began.

One problem was that Everett still hadn’t regained his natural running motion. Douglas said it wasn’t until late March, three weeks before the Mount SAC race and 2 years after the first injury, that he noticed Everett getting around without a limp.

“When he first started running, he had trouble breaking 35 seconds in the 200,” Douglas said. “But he made progress - 30 seconds, 25, then he was proceeding by inches. All of a sudden, two weeks before Mount SAC, he was running 250 meters and he came by 200 in 21.1 or 21.2. That was a sign he was better.”

Everett finished .85 seconds behind Lewis at Mount SAC.

So the training goes on and Everett keeps looking for signs that he’s getting better. A sure one is that he no longer has to run alone.

“I’m able to keep up with them in practice now,” he said with a satisfied smile.

Douglas thinks that will come, too, and predicts that by the time Everett runs at Eugene, Ore., June 4, he’ll break 45 seconds. He even thinks Everett can make the world championships team, which means he’d have to finish in the top three at the U.S. championships in mid-June at Sacramento, Calif.