Goldengirl

While officials cleared the track of hurdles, Dryden was scanning a section of the crowd through his field glasses. ‘Come on,’ he abruptly said to Melody. ‘We’re moving. I want a better view this time. Some people up there are leaving.’ He hustled her along the row, down a gangway and past two officials in conversation. The seats were situated high up, almost level with the finish. The people sitting alongside gave them suspicious looks, and then someone said, ‘Amerikanka,’ which seemed to explain everything.

The eight finalists had appeared in the arena. For the first time in the afternoon the atmosphere was charged with that tension that can bind a 100,000 people into a unit, totally absorbed in a human activity as simple as a ten-second run. Across the world millions more watched and waited. And the eight who had earned the right to a few seconds’ attention from the biggest audience in history jogged about the small grass enclosure, preoccupied, heads down, steeling themselves. The vast majority of those watching regarded this as a mild diversion to be looked at, enjoyed, forgotten, but those eight pent-up athletes had lived with this moment for years and would relive it till their lives’ end. A faulty start, a lapse of concentration, a cramp, and how much was lost? A race? A professional contract? An Order of Lenin? A way of life?

One conclusion was certain: when that 100 metres had been run, not one of those eight girls would be quite the same person.

The starter touched a button that sounded an electronic signal to the finalists. Warm-ups were peeled off, spikes checked, secret prayers uttered.

Dryden had Goldine in focus. She appeared to be smiling, saying something to Ursula Krüll. The German looked away. In the stands, people were chanting her name. The Russians were responding with ‘Mu-ra-to-va.’

The starter spoke into his microphone, and the chanting stopped.

‘Na Mesta.’

The girls moved forward. Each starting block was fitted with its own loudspeaker, so that there should be no split-second’s acoustic advantage.

‘Gotovo.’

Goldine was in lane 3, Krüll 5, Muratova 6.

103,000 spectators, and you could hear a flag flapping on the lip of the Stadium.

Suddenly it was happening. The gun had fired and they were off their blocks, building speed, oblivious to the deluge of sound from every side. Goldine was angled low, impelled by the power of her start. There was a purpose to her running that had not been evident in earlier rounds. She was declaring herself now, when it counted, running with an action that made the others look mechanical. Meter by metre she imposed herself on the race. Her will reached up the strip to the finish, as clear as the lane markings.

A metre down, Krüll was summoning the power acquired in those years of weightlifting. Although it was taking her clear of the other runners, it hauled back nothing from Goldine. The muscular effort for a 100-metre sprint theoretically requires about seven liters of oxygen, but the lungs cannot supply more than half a liter in the ten seconds. So when the muscles have used the oxygen available, they incur a debt. They gather lactic acid and other alien substances that the body can tolerate only for a short time. Krüll’s capacity to surmount the oxygen debt had been calculated by East German physiologists to be worth a full metre in the last thirty. But where was it?

Goldine held her lead to the line, dipped as Klugman had drilled her, ran on, turned, bowed to draw breath, and was engulfed by cameramen.

SERAFIN USA 10.81 flashed the scoreboard. NEW OLYMPIC RECORD.

‘How was that for openers?’ said Melody.

Dryden didn’t answer. A pulse was beating in his head and his whole body was shaking.

‘Snap out of it,’ said Melody. ‘You look like death. She won — okay?’

He still sat in silence, feeling the tension subside, startling him with his physical involvement in what had happened.

Around them, as if they had needed time to make a mental adjustment, people were beginning to clap, many standing for a better view. It had percolated that Ursula Krüll had been decisively defeated, not by Muratova, but the blond American, who had concealed her devastating form through all the previous rounds.

Dryden, who knew Goldine’s ability, who had touted it around the board rooms of Los Angeles and New York, should not have reacted this way. Now he secretly admitted to himself that after the Semi-Finals he had written off her chance of gold.

He stood with the others to see Goldine approach Krüll, now being consoled by teammates. They touched hands. The German girl nodded, looking Goldine up and down as if she were from another planet, then turned to retrace the 100-metre stretch she had believed was hers.

On NBC-TV William Weston said, ‘Watching that instant replay with me was Dr. William Serafin, the proudest man in this Lenin Stadium. How about that, Doc? Wasn’t she just incredible?’