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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Leap Of Faith Overcomes Failure

All of us have failed at something important in the past.

Maybe we forgot a line in a high school play. Or we might have made the last out in the big baseball game against a school rival. Or we froze during the college entrance exam and scored too low to qualify for a prestigious college.

Such failure can haunt us for the rest of our lives if we let it. Many of us do. We go out of our way not to be put in a similar spot to fail again. We limit ourselves.

Few of us, however, ever have experienced the humiliating public failure of Dan O’Brien, the former University of Idaho track star and best decathlete in the world. Favored to win the decathlon at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, O’Brien missed qualifying for the U.S. team because he couldn’t clear the pole vault - one of the event’s 10 tests of skill.

After a big buildup to the competition, which included Reebok’s $25 million “Dan and Dave” ad campaign, no one would have blamed O’Brien for quitting then - in frustration and defeat. With the next Olympics competition four years off, training for the grueling decathlon would be tough enough, without the specter of failure dogging him.

Instead, O’Brien, with help from friends and coaches, faced his fear, won eight consecutive decathlons, including his second and third world championships, and set an event record with 8,891 points. Finally, at the Olympic trials in Atlanta last weekend, he exorcised the 1992 failure and won a trip to this summer’s Atlanta Games by clearing the pole vault on his first try.

That first vault, with the bar set at 14 feet, 9 inches, wasn’t easy. O’Brien noticeably was nervous before he started down the runway and elated when he bounded out of the pit moments later. Recently, he explained to Sports Illustrated how nerve-wracking the pole vault competition has become for him: “I get an increased heart rate, sweaty palms. I have to force myself to relax and do things correctly.”

Ultimately, O’Brien topped 17 feet at the Olympic trials.

But he already had defeated a fear so paralyzing that in 1993 his coaches virtually pushed him onto the track for the 100-meter dash and high jump contests at the U.S. nationals.

Off the track, O’Brien has become a champion, too - by encouraging area high schoolers not to follow his early steps into alcohol abuse, which almost cost him his athletic career. He’s told the story many times of how he squandered his first three years at UI by “partying all the time” with loyal but dissolute friends.

O’Brien is a stronger athlete and person today because he faced his demons, self-inflicted and otherwise, and conquered them.

How about you?

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board