AFRICA WAS RIGHT ON IN DIXIE
The hollow thunk thunk of conga drums and the singsong rhythms of bongos pulsed down from the upper rows of Duke University's Wallace Wade Stadium. The scene last weekend in Durham, N.C. was not supposed to be musical and, in fact, the dozen or more drummers were merely spectators at the Pan-Africa-U.S.A. International Track Meet. Yet their playing sounded the right note for the first appearance of an all-Africa team in America.
Indeed, except for the alternately bizarre and brilliant races of a tiny Ethiopian distance runner, Mirus Ifter, the meet was more a triumph of spirit than of track. There were no major records at Durham, where the weather was too hot and muggy and the recently resurfaced track too springy. There were, however, plenty of firsts. Never before had the visitors joined together as one team, all wearing the same green uniform with the gold letters A-F-R-I-C-A across the backs and lining up behind one flag, the banner of the 14-nation Supreme Council for Sport in Africa.
Whether the Supreme Council's achievement in Pan-Africanism will have any political impact on that continent is doubtful, but it was immediately clear that the presence of a unified African team was a unique occasion for Americans. The meet was the first of international stature ever held in the South, and it was a success, drawing financial backing from the local government and businesses and a surprising total crowd of 52,000 for the two days. It also provided a moment of special pride for the Afro-Americans who made up most of the U.S. team. And it was an hour of triumph for Leroy Walker, the dynamic black coach at Durham's North Carolina Central University who dared to dream of bringing Africa to the South.
Although the visiting men lost 111-78 and the U.S. women easily won, the meet demonstrated that Africa continues to heat up as an incubator for track and field talent. Africans won five Gold Medals at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, but all were regarded with suspicion because the winners were accustomed to competition at high altitudes. The African men won the same number of first-place medals in Durham, along with nine seconds, including unexpected ones in the shotput and discus. Two of the wins, Kipchoge Keino's in the 1,500 meters (3:37.5) and John Akii-Bua's in the intermediate hurdles (49 flat), were tainted despite their brilliance by the absence of America's—and the world's—best. Miler Marty Liquori and hurdler Ralph Mann, the only two runners with better times than the Africans in those events this season, decided to compete in Europe instead of in Durham, a decision that hardly enhanced their sport. Robert Ouko in the 800 meters and steeplechaser Ben Jipcho won clear victories over the best U.S. competition. For the U.S., Pat Matzdorf, the new world record holder, showed his consistency by easily clearing 7'4" on his first try.
The Africans might have won six men's events had it not been for the strange happenings during Ifter's 5,000-meter race against Steve Prefontaine. Prefontaine was expected to be an easy winner, because nobody west of the Blue Nile had ever heard of Ifter. Nobody was likely to notice him either. He may stand as much as 5'4", but it is hard to be sure since he speaks only Amharic, reticent Amharic at that. When an interpreter asked him how tall he is, Ifter deepened the furrows on his already worried-looking face and answered, "I don't know."
In the 5,000 meters, while Prefontaine maintained his usual steady pace, Ifter kept shifting position between first and fourth. Then with 300 yards to go on the next-to-last lap, Ifter broke into a sprint. Prefontaine kicked briefly with him and then slackened back to his usual speed. When Ifter reached the finish line to begin the gun lap, he led Prefontaine by 40 yards. He threw up his hands in supposed victory and came to a stop, thinking the race was over. In the ensuing confusion, Prefontaine completed the final lap and won in 13:57.6.
After the race Ifter, looking even more worried than ever, said he never saw the lap cards, that he could not understand shouts from the sidelines and that he was accustomed to hearing bells, not a gun, signal the final lap. A teammate informed the press that Ifter was "bitter" about the whole affair.
To Prefontaine it was simply confusing. "I really didn't understand it until he put up his arms," Prefontaine said. "It came as much as a shock to me as it did to him. I was looking forward to that last lap. He sprinted for about 100 yards down the backstretch, but then he was already starting to come back to me and I hadn't even begun my kick. Still, I don't like to win that way. Nobody likes tainted victories. I'd just as soon run it again."
After the race, Jean Claude Ganga, the African team manager, reprimanded the interpreter who had been brought to the meet to count laps for Ifter but had failed to take his post at trackside. Ganga said of Ifter's error, "In some countries it's a gong, gong, in others it's a bing, bing, bing. Here it's a boom. He did not know this."
Ifter's confusion immediately won the crowd's sympathy, and meet officials awarded the Ethiopian a winner's watch for his efforts. They might not have been so generous with the jewelry if they had known what he would do the next day in the 10,000 against Frank Shorter. For this longer race, Ifter changed his style. Through virtually all of the first 24 laps he remained a step behind Shorter, never passing the American when he slowed, yet remaining on Shorter's heels whenever he stepped up the tempo to try to build a lead. With an interpreter and a bell at trackside, along with the usual lap cards and gun, Ifter made no mistakes in this race. At the start of the final lap he sprinted away from Shorter, opening a 20-yard lead in the back-stretch. Shorter, who felt overraced after an active spring and reluctantly agreed to appear in Durham only the day before the meet began, started his kick in the final turn and pulled even with Ifter at the top of the homestretch. But he got no farther. Despite the 91° heat, the African found the drive for another sprint and dashed away to a 10-yard victory in 28:53.1.
Now it was the Americans' turn for annoyance. Shorter was displeased at having had to set the pace for the entire race, a grueling role over the nearly 25 laps of the 10,000 meters. "It's not a code of behavior, nothing like that," explained steeplechaser Mike Manley. "It's just a feeling distance runners have among themselves that a man who does not want to lead the whole way shouldn't be made by his opponents to keep the lead. Things like this can cause bad feelings."
Shorter, who ended up with his slowest time of the year, felt he had been ill-prepared. "That's the last time that will happen," he said. "You need two weeks to get ready for something like this, instead of doing a full 20-mile workout as I did on Thursday, then coming out and hoping to hang on. I guess it was just delusions of grandeur. I thought I was strong enough to do it."
It was a similar fragile grandeur that Ebenezer Moses Debrah, the ambassador from Ghana, sought when he predicted that Africa would win most of the events. "The greatest athletes in your country are from Africa," he warned North Carolina Governor Bob Scott at the airport before a lavish reception at the Governor's Mansion in Raleigh. "And, Africa can't lose against itself. Since you're from cigarette country, maybe you'd better switch than fight."
America's black athletes and the predominantly black crowd at Duke came near to agreeing with him. Each African victory was heartily cheered, and students from Malcolm X Liberation University in Greensboro, N.C. held up signs in French, Swahili and English which read, "Welcome to our brothers and sisters," and "We are the people of Africa." After each event the drummers stopped their pounding long enough to recompute their special black, red and green scoreboard that listed the totals under the headings Africa and White. Their final tally read 185-83.
"It feels good, man, to finally be running in this meet after all those political meets against the Germans, Russians and French," said John Smith, who flew back from Europe to win the 400 meters in 45.7, the 200 in 20.7, and help the U.S. mile relay team to a 3:03.5 victory. "Instead of just having the Africans grouped on something called the world team in meets with Russian and American teams, it's good to be running only against them."
"You're not really running against them," interrupted retired long jumper Ralph Boston. "It's more like running with them."
It was a similar sense of something special that inspired Leroy Walker to bring the Pan-Africa-U.S.A. meet to North Carolina. Walker, who has been shuttling to Africa since 1960 to coach national teams, run clinics for the State Department and formulate development plans for the Peace Corps, first mentioned the possibility of such an affair four years ago. But it was not until he and AAU track and field director Ollan Cassell met in an Oslo sauna bath last summer that the decision to go ahead with the meet was made. "For a long time after that I thought the heat had got to us," Walker s ys.
To add to the impression that he had gone mad, Walker managed to convince the AAU to hold the meet in Durham, this despite bids from New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Oakland. The largest previous track crowd in North Carolina had been 2,000. But with the help of some local money, including a $10,000 grant from the city of Durham, Walker put together an event that was successful far beyond the dreams of even his heated-up imagination. "Four or five years ago—maybe half a dozen years ago, I don't want to sell anybody short—this meet could not have been held in Carolina," he says. "We couldn't have gotten a meeting of the minds to do it." Last week, most of Durham's citizenry seemed intent on using the meet as evidence of general civic togetherness. And all things considered, it was pretty impressive evidence.
Still there were loud voices saying that 10 African track meets cannot cure the problems lingering in Durham—and most cities. Black leader Howard Fuller greeted the visiting ambassadors by calling on them to tour the seamier side of Durham. Some Durham citizens did take a few of the African athletes into the ghettos for a brief visit, a tour that must have changed some African preconceptions about the lavish American way of life. Ivory Crockett, who was second in the 100 meters to Jim Green, said that when the African athletes go home and tell what they saw, "No one will believe them. They will be surprised to hear that we aren't all living in brick houses and have nice cars." And the Duke student newspaper editorialized, "While the Duke athletic department gloried in the international track meet, what about the rest of Duke? Just because there are black athletes from Africa and from America competing in Wade Stadium does not mean that Duke is any less exploitative or discriminatory in its everyday policies toward black workers and black students."
But Leroy Walker appreciated the real meaning of his meet; that the mere fact it took place in Durham indicated massive changes, but not so much change that tickets could be priced too high. "We are charging only $1.50 and $2.50 to go to the meet," he said one day last week. "That's cheaper than some high school basketball games around here. I didn't want anyone who wanted to see this meet to say, 'I'd like to go, but I can't afford it.' Two $5 tickets, which is the price at most stadiums, would be too much. It's equal to a lot of people's grocery bill for the week."
Saturday's crowd of 34,000 was the largest for a track meet in the U.S. this year, and it was made up largely of the people Walker hoped his low prices would attract, including a few proud drummers.
PHOTO
NEIL LEIFER
Sprinting ahead of Prefontaine in the 5,000 meters, Ifter romps away to a hand-waving victory—but something got lost in translation.
THREE PHOTOS
NEIL LEIFER
Urged on by the predominantly black crowd, smiling Kip Keino ran the 1,500 meters in a fine 3:37.5 and then mixed happily with fans.