There is no "I" in "Team"

"In my language there is a saying, 'Ndiwelimilambo enamagama' ('I have crossed famous rivers'). It means that one has traveled a great distance, that one has had wide experience and gained some wisdom from it." - Nelson Mandela

We all traveled a great distance -- several hours to JFK, eight hours to Cape Verde (a little island off the east coast of Africa), then seven more hours to Johannesburg, and finally, two more hours to Cape Town, South Africa. And we crossed famous rivers or, rather, ran in the wakes of the famous: Tergat, Tulu, Gebrselassie, Skah, Ribeira ... with President Mandela, himself, in attendance ... but how much wisdom did we Americans gain from it?

There were complaints. "Where are Kennedy and Williams?" "Why isn't Lynn Jennings here?" "It's the Olympic year," we said. "They want to focus on the Olympics." Oh. I guess, Gebrselassie isn't running in Atlanta (!?). It's not an Olympic year for the Kenyans or the Romanians. or Spaniards, Moroccans, Ethiopians (!?). I guess they're not running in the Olympics, otherwise they wouldn't dare risk showing up at the World Cross-country Championships, big guns firing on every 2,000m lap of the deceptively challenging course (made even tougher by the 91 degree heat). But they did run, fast, in Cape Town. And they will run, faster, in Atlanta. And if history proves correct, the one-shot American distance runners will be battling to make the Olympic games final and no more.

It is no coincidence that our only long distance Olympic medal since Frank Shorter (twenty years ago) came from Lynn Jennings in 1992, the year following her three consecutive World Cross-country titles. She gained in experience, wisdom, race savvy, confidence, and, most important, expectation with each sprint-off-the-line, grit-your-teeth, hang-on, elbows, spikes, fight-fight-fight, now sprint, SPRINT DAMMIT! to the finish line of each World Cross Country Championship. She believed she belonged up there on the medal stand in Barcelona because she not only ran with them in each consecutive world cross race, she dominated! Now why, WHY, haven't we learned?

The American way is to hole up on our individual runners' islands training 100+ miles per week month after month until we've somehow earned the right to race and prove our fitness - but never without the sand-bagging, pre-race excuse, "I'm training through this." Many of our nine senior men told me just that before this year's World Cross Championship: "I'm training through this." Why? What would it hurt, three months before our Olympic Trials, to back off a little, just a little, to compete (to RACE, not just run) against the best runners in the world? Training through a race gives you a built-in excuse to fail. It gives you a way out.

I sat next to Olympic gold-medalist Khalid Skah on the bus ride home from the meet and he was poring over the race results like some high-school kid whose team just finished 2nd at the conference meet. "Look here," he pointed, "Our number six runner (the last scorer) has been injured. He came 41st. Last year he was 12th. We could have beaten the Kenyans." Not likely, but my point is he was involved, he participated fully, in the competition. He raced to win and coming short of that (7th overall, while his younger teammate, Salah Hissou, got the silver medal) he was content, even proud, to be a strong number two man on Team Morocco. For him the team score mattered.

Team score? What an amazing concept. You mean they actually score the world championships in Cross-country? In the Kenyan system, the youngest (or slowest) runner on the team sacrifices by running me the front as long as he can to allow the "designated winner" (in the men's case, Tergat) to cruise along, effortlessly. When the young Kenyan tires, another takes over to force the pace. The theory is, if you sacrifice today your time will come to be the designated winner. For them it works. Could you name any single U.S. runner who would be willing to do this for his or her team, for our country? Sadly, no. It would go against our precious American individualism.

And as for the senior women's race, Laura Mykytok, the supreme egomaniac, didn't even show up. She insulted her teammates, the U.S. coaches, and the United States by leaving us waiting with her ticket and passport at the airport. No phone call. No apologies. Only "me." Hey, Laura, did you ever hear this one? "There's no 'I' in team."

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