Only Bombs Stop O’Brien

When Time magazine hits the newsstands this week with Dan O’Brien on the cover, it’s bound to be a little amusing to those citizens of Moscow, Idaho, who still remember him as their Culligan man.

If he’s the cover, that is.

“The woman at Time told me I’m it unless somebody bombs somebody,” O’Brien related at a workout the other day, “or unless somebody important dies.”

That’s Dan: He’s forever a story, and something about it is perpetually pending.

A personal pothole to sidestep, a record to put out of reach, another frontier of physical potential to explore. And then there was that business that was supposed to be settled in Barcelona, but turned out only to be continued.

Such is the price of having your identity looped together with the Olympic rings.

Drum upon drum of ink has been tapped and drained in the telling of Dan O’Brien’s tale, all with the full knowledge that only O’Brien himself can finish it - which, barring further cruelties, will happen in just 19 days.

And when he does - if he does - even O’Brien may not be as relieved as his neighbors in Moscow, whose soft water he installed and whose golf course he mowed while he decided what he wanted to be when he grew up. If he grew up.

“That’s the coolest thing about this, the people who’ve been so loyal to me - so many it’s impossible to thank them all,” he said. “It feels like I took everybody on a pretty cool ride.”

Hang on. Here comes the scariest part.

You can have your pixie gymnast, your grizzly bear wrestler, your swimming doyenne. You can have the splendid sprinter they actually changed the Olympic schedule to accommodate.

Carl Lewis can do what only Al Oerter has done and still be a subplot.

Not to dismiss the other 10,000 athletes gathering in Georgia for the 1996 Olympics, but the decathlon is the defining event - OK, 10 events - of the Games and has been ever since the king of Sweden looped a gold medal around Jim Thorpe’s neck in 1912 and said, “You, sir, are the world’s greatest athlete.”

And this time, on his soil, the decathlon is O’Brien - the greatest talent the event has ever known.

“I’m biased about this,” admitted Frank Zarnowski, the Maryland college professor who is to the decathlon what Teddy White was to the campaign trail, “but I think it is the centerpiece of the Olympics.

“The problem is, the public doesn’t pay attention until it’s the Olympic year and then everybody pays attention. But two weeks after the Games, USA Today will be cover-to-cover football.”

O’Brien doesn’t sweat much, and certainly not that. Between Olympics he has set the world record and won three world championships, but recognizes them for what they were.

Rehearsals.

“A guy asked me the other day if I wished I was in one of the ‘glory’ events - like the 100 meters,” O’Brien said. “But every four years, decathletes have a chance at the greatest prize. This is the most glorious event of the Games. Every year they name the world’s fastest man. But only at the Olympics do they name the world’s greatest athlete.”

That’s the hook: The last time they took the roll, O’Brien was absent.

The resurrection stories - O’Brien the world-beater who buried O’Brien the dropout, the drunk, the reluctant charge - have given way to redemption stories. He long ago wearied of the former theme, and tried not to buy into the latter.

“But I never forgot what happened,” he said. “How could I?” What happened, of course, was that on his way to a world record at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials in New Orleans, O’Brien couldn’t make it over his opening height of 15 feet, 9 inches in the pole vault. Three tries, three misses, no points.

No berth to Barcelona.

What O’Brien did in the wake of such a devastating disappointment set the tone for the next four years.

OK, so he went down to Bourbon Street and buried his pain in the bottom of a cocktail glass. But first, he finished the decathlon. He threw the javelin. He ran the 1,500. He finished 11th - only the top three qualify for the Olympics - but he finished. And then he answered every question - never once lashing out at a qualifying system that’s as fair as you’ll find, yet is considered foolish in most other countries.

Finishing didn’t stop the criticism - some of it ill-considered - that O’Brien should have started vaulting at a lower, supposedly safer height, criticism that he’d blown his big chance. But it did cast him in a different light.

And when he scored 8,891 points to break the world record in Talence, France, the world had a new window to Dan O’Brien.

Not that a world record kept him from breaking out in hives any time he picked up a pole in competition. And when it came time to vault in this year’s trials in Atlanta, every eye was on O’Brien.

This time, he joined the competition with the bar at 14-9. This time, he made it.

“It wasn’t perfect - I rushed the jump a little bit,” he said. “I was trying to beat the press corps. I’d thought about that moment for a long time.”

Jim Thorpe, by the way, didn’t have to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team in the decathlon in his day. He was one of two athletes who showed up to the East Coast trials in 1912 and, having already won the pentathlon, was told he was in. The other man was sent home - without even attempting a vault.

The shock of O’Brien not making the Olympic team in 1992 was exacerbated by the ad campaign Reebok had concocted hyping a Barcelona showdown between him and fellow American Dave Johnson, who wound up limping to the bronze medal on a broken foot. But that was a contrivance - O’Brien on an average day was 200 points better.

His score from this year’s trials - 8,726 - left him less than 100 ahead of runner-up Steve Fritz. Indeed, O’Brien hasn’t topped 8,800 points since 1993 - though he has never been below 8,682, either.

“It probably looks like Dan is losing a step,” O’Brien said, smiling, “but I don’t think so.”

He has now pushed his personal bests in the 10 decathlon events to the point where, put together, they would add up to 9,500 points, but that’s an irrelevant indicator. O’Brien’s body fat is a minuscule 3 percent, and at the trials he ran the first-day concluding 400 meters in 46.81 - his fastest time in five years. Fitness in the 400, he insisted, is the key to decathlon fitness.

And if you’re not impressed, consider that in a workout the other day, O’Brien ran the 100 meters in 9.82 seconds with a rolling start.

“I think he wins even with one bad event - it just can’t be a no-height or a no-mark,” said Zarnowski.

Said O’Brien of his competition, “I don’t worry about how I look compared to other guys anymore. It used to be I thought I had to win the long jump - that was my event - and if I didn’t, well, disaster. I don’t think like that now.”

He’s changed his thinking on a lot of things. In 1992, he bought his parents plane tickets to Barcelona before the trials; this time, he wouldn’t even put on USA socks or agree to jog with President Clinton - before he made the team. The appearance on David Letterman’s show had to wait, too.

He even restructured his relationship with coaches Mike Keller and Rick Sloan. “As a young athlete, I needed a lot of guidance,” he said. “Because they helped me so much to become a good athlete, they took a role in my off-the-track life, too. I had to separate that. I needed some independence. I was afraid of hurting the friendships.”

It was to be settled in Barcelona, but it seems some of it has been settled in the aftermath.

“I’m a person who’s had a lot of life experience in different areas,” O’Brien said. “I didn’t commit to being a world-class athlete until late. I was just a kid trying to find himself, and honestly, a lot of that had to do with me being an adopted child. It took a long time to figure out who I was. I’d have to say I’m pretty happy with where I’m at now.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: All-time decathlons 8891 Dan O’Brien (USA) - 1992 8847 Daley Thompson (GB) - 1984 8844 Dan O’Brien (USA) - 1991 8832 Jurgen Hingsen (EG) - 1984 8825 Jurgen Hingsen (EG) - 1973 8817 Dan O’Brien (USA) - 1993 8812 Dan O’Brien (USA) - 1991 8811 Daley Thompson (GB) - 1986 8792 Uwe Freimuth (WG) - 1984 8774 Daley Thompson (GB) - 1982

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review