1964 Olympic hero still seeking to make strides

DENVER – Despite vexing knees that no longer allow him to run, Billy Mills is out to make strides even at 68.

The unlikely hero of the 1964 Tokyo Games, where he won the 10,000 meters in what many consider the greatest upset in Olympic track history, Mills was in Denver this week at the North American Indigenous Games to lend a helping hand whenever and wherever he could to encourage empowerment through sports.

“Using sports to teach life values is sacred,” said Mills, a part Lakota Sioux Indian who was orphaned at 12 and overcame poverty and racism to become an All-American at Kansas and an Olympic champion.

“Properly taught, properly structured, sports can better prepare young people for the challenges they’ll face later in life than anything they can do at a young age,” Mills said. “Improperly taught, improperly structured, sports is as meaningless as anything else.”

The North American Indigenous Games are bringing together some 7,000 athletes from 23 states and 11 Canadian provinces for 16 sports. The competitions run through Friday.

This celebration of sport and culture allows nearly 1,000 tribes to “talk about to what extent we maintain our culture, our tradition, our spirituality, which have been lost in many other cultures,” Mills said.

Mills, who was raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, is especially revered by indigenous athletes for his triumph at the 1964 Olympics, when he wove through a field of lapped runners and collared two of the world’s most accomplished distance runners in the final few strides, hitting the tape 46 seconds faster than he had ever run before.

To this day, Mills uses that triumph to teach life’s lessons:

“After my mom died when I was 8, my dad said, ‘You have broken wings.’ And I started crying,” Mills recounted. “But he said, ‘I’ll share something with you and if you follow it, someday you’ll have wings of an eagle.’ “

A stick was taken and a circle drawn.

Step inside, son, his father said.

“Look inside of your heart, your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul. What do you find?”

The young boy said nothing.

“I’ll tell you what you find,” his father said. “Anger. You just lost your mom. Hate, because people have expressed hatred toward us. Jealousy, because we don’t have anything of material value.

“But because of the jealousy, you’re blind. You don’t see the virtue in the values of our culture. And you have a whole lot of self-pity. Those emotions will destroy you. Look deeper, way down deep where the dreams lie.”

Eighteen years later, Mills was a virtual unknown with a big dream.

A Type II diabetic, he was going low on blood sugar as he entered the last lap on the rain-soaked track. He came off the curve in third place, behind favorites Ron Clarke of Australia and Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia. A lapped runner from West Germany moved over to let him pass.

“And I glance at the German, and in the center of the German’s shirt is an eagle,” Mills recalled. “I think of my dad: ‘Someday you’ll have wings of an eagle.”’

With a shocking final kick, Mills hit the tape first as millions watched in awe.

“The underlying theme of the Indigenous Games is to teach our young people responsibility and accountability,” Mills said.

So they can be proud of their accomplishments, their heritage.

“We’re not mascots,” Mills said. “We’re the real deal.”