Goldengirl

‘People are trying all the time. TV, radio, papers. You name it,’ said Klugman. ‘She’s giving no more interviews till Wednesday night when it’s all over. Team management decision. Would you believe they had to move her into the U.S. Embassy last night? You can ban the press from the Olympic Village, but you can’t stop competitors setting up as free-lance journalists. They try to interview big-name athletes with the idea of selling exclusives to the papers. Goddamned racket. Soon as anyone brings a gold medal back, they go for them like jackals. Plays hell with the chance of anyone trying to psych up for the other events. I hear the East Germans have moved Krüll out for the same reason. Since that world record yesterday, she’s back in business.’

‘It was smart psychology,’ said Dryden.

‘Smart running. She tied up at the finish, but if she can learn to coast the back stretch, she’ll go faster. That’s what the German coaches will have told her. We can expect something under forty-nine seconds in the Final. Goldengirl’s best ever is fifty point five.’

Dryden had heard Pete Klugman on his lugubrious tack before, but still felt his stomach lurch. ‘First they have to run the 200 Final,’ he pointed out. ‘If she tops Krüll in that...’ The ‘if’ betrayed him. He started again. ‘She was invincible in the one hundred. After the illness, the layoff, we had no right to expect her to run so brilliantly.’

‘Looks like the time out helped her,’ said Klugman. ‘I’ve known it to happen before. The diabetes is mild, it’s under control now, and the break in training was mentally beneficial. The whole experience sharpened her motivation. She’s hooked on success. Totally.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘It makes her pretty insufferable. Another reason they moved her out of the Village is she refuses to share a room with other girls.’ He shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if she had breakfast with the Ambassador. Caviar on toast.’

The Quarter-Finals of the 200 metres, in midafternoon, provided more confirmation that Ursula Krüll was under instructions to take a rest from record-breaking. She tagged the U.S. girl Shelley Wilson, keeping a conspicuous two metres adrift all the way up the stretch, finishing in 22.83 secs. In her heat, Goldine, too, refused to be drawn by Muratova, who delighted the crowd by equaling Eckert’s gold-medal performance of 1976, with 22.37 secs. To underline the achievement, a small girl was waiting near the finish to scamper across the track and present the Russian with a posy of flowers.

Dryden was alone in the stands that afternoon, Melody having declared herself more interested in shopping at GUM. Since that first evening when they had met the vigilante between their rooms at the Ukraina, Melody had been disenchanted with Moscow. There was no room service, the waiters in the restaurants ignored you, and Soviet vermouth was no substitute for Campari. He wasn’t expecting a rave report on GUM.

One of the consortium, at least, was more sanguine about the city. The previous evening, Valenti had arrived in the bar with Sternberg. After remarking that the kidnaping had obviously done Goldengirl no harm, he went on to describe his experience the previous evening, when the phone in his room had rung and he had taken a call from an English-speaking girl offering to play Olympic games for five rubles. ‘The best five rubles I ever spent!’ he assured them. ‘If you guys had some sense, you’d be up in your rooms now, sitting by the phone. Me? I’m sated. Besides, I must keep back some rubles for a fur hat.’

There was a surprise when the line-up for the second Semi-Final of the 400 metres was announced, for it included both Ursula Krüll and Goldine. The crowd needed no prompting at the significance of this; the news reverberated around the Stadium in scores of languages.

The clash raised the possibility that the two would be drawn into a struggle to gain the psychological prize of finishing ahead. It did not materialize. As if by tacit agreement, they ran side by side to the line, aligning so closely that they shared the same time of 50.43 secs. The photo finish gave Krüll the edge because technology will not admit that ties are possible in the modern Olympics, but nobody seemed to mind. The girls posed for pictures with their arms around each other’s shoulders, giving caption writers the world over the opportunity to comment that sport is about friendship, not international rivalry.

Tuesday, August 19, was the rest day from track and field. Dryden planned to use the morning to confer with the NBC-TV team about the linkup with the White House. He would also find out what he could about GOLD TOMORROW? He hoped to wangle an invitation, if only to watch it live on a monitor.