Runner in his prime never had shot in '80

By Chris Rosenblum

Two laps remained, all that stood between Greg Fredericks and the payoff for years spent pounding miles.

CDT/Nabil K. Mark

Greg Fredericks made the 1980 Olympic Track & Field team in the 10,000 meter run. The 1980 Olympics, which were held in Moscow, Russia, were boycotted by the United States. CDT/Nabil K. Mark Augrust 7, 2008

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On a fine May day, he was going to become an Olympian.

The pack in the 10,000 meter race at the 1980 U.S. Olympic trials churned behind him. Ahead steamed the leader, out of reach. Fredericks could savor the moment. Barring a catastrophe, he had finally succeeded in his third bid to reach the Games.

“I remember passing (Alberto) Salazar and thinking, ‘I’m in second place. (The others are) not coming back. They’re dying. I’m in second place, and I’m making the team,’ ” Fredericks said.

Aglow at being among the three Olympic qualifiers, he proceeded to a dormitory near the University of Oregon track. Coaches gave him a U.S. team schedule.

They might as well have doused him with ice water.

“So here are the pre- Olympic meets and here are the post-Olympic meets,” Fredericks said. “And that was the first time it really hit me: There’s no Games on the schedule. We’re not going.”

Fredericks, now 58 and a systems administrator with Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, was a victim of the times.

As a protest against the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. decided to forgo the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The announcement came well before the trials, but Fredericks had gone to the meet convinced the boycott wouldn’t happen. Track icon Jesse Owens had died that month; surely, the U.S. would attend in his memory.

“I just couldn’t fathom that we wouldn’t go to the Games,” Fredericks said. “I mean, it’s about bringing people together.”

Growing up near Reading, he soaked up the fledgling TV coverage of the 1960 Games in Rome and devoured Olympic stories in Sports Illustrated. Milers, like the fabled Jim Ryun, fascinated him.

“A lot of times I’d leave my bike at home and I’d run around with everybody,” Fredericks said. “They’d be on their bikes and I’d be running. I just always enjoyed it.”

In junior high school, however, mile and half-mile races were few and far between. Fredericks ran sprints and pole vaulted instead. A switch to cross country in high school led to a record-setting career at Penn State as a distance runner.

In 1972, his senior year, Fredericks qualified for the U.S. trials in the 10K and 5K races. He arrived as the national 10K champion but left humbled. Temperatures in the mid- 90s made for a grueling race.

“I think I finished sixth or seventh, something like that,” he said. “A lot of people dropped out. The weather conditions were horrendous.”

The 5K was a similar bust: “It just wasn’t there. I was already zapped.”

For months afterward, he took a break from running. But he couldn’t stay away for long.

“You don’t ease back into it,” he said. “It’s a grind. Once you’ve been away, the mind tends to say, ‘OK, we used to do 15 miles a day. Let’s go out and do seven or 10.’ I can remember the first time coming back in, sicker than a dog.”

He returned to racing in 1974 and, a year later, won the national cross country meet in Annapolis. Taking second in the 5K in a photo finish at the 1976 national indoor championships in Madison Square Garden, he seemed primed for the Olympic trials.

“Like four years before, I was picked as one of those who should make the team, based on all the times I was running,” he said. “Once again, I failed to make it.”

Back in State College, he didn’t give up.

Running twice a day, logging 85 to 100 miles a week, he juggled his Olympic training with his business and family. One month in 1980, he cranked out 629 miles — a hardship more for his wife and two children, he said, than him.

“There’s no question there’s some selfishness that goes with being an elite athlete,” he said. “It’s tough to get around it.”

Then came the 1980 U.S. trials, and Fredericks had a plan. He figured 28 minutes flat would be good enough, and he stuck to his pace. Runners tried to break away. Fredericks held steady. Surge after surge, he didn’t bite.

In the end, with a personal best of 28 minutes, three seconds, he stood euphoric. That summer with the U.S. team, he would fizzle at European meets and come home. In two years, he would pull a muscle and let go of dreams of another Olympic effort in 1984.

But that one race in May 1980 gave him satisfaction for a lifetime. The Games could be taken away, but nothing could deny him the thrill he felt at the finish line.

“I think, sitting here and reflecting, there was such joy and happiness of saying to yourself, ‘I always knew I was good enough to make the Olympic team, and I’ve done it.’ And it kind of vindicates everything you’ve done.”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.