http://www.thestar.com/News/article/205887
Prince Albert, Sask.-born, Vancouver-raised Harry Winston Jerome (1940-1983) was a sprinter who represented Canada three times at the Summer Olympics, winning the 100-metre bronze in 1964 in Tokyo. He also won the gold in the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games and the 1967 Pan American Games.
During his career, Jerome set a total of seven world records. After retiring from athletics in 1969, he helped create Canada’s new Ministry of Sport.
The following excerpt from Fil Fraser’s new Jerome biography – Running Uphill: The Fast, Short Life of Harry Jerome (Dragon Hill Press) – deals with the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia.
The flight from Vanouver to Perth is very long, even today. No one has ever survived it without jet lag. But Harry Jerome put on an optimistic face: “I feel in top shape. I have trained myself to a fine edge for these games.”
But the facts, revealed in letters home to Wendy, showed that he was a long way from being “in top shape.” Using those Aerogramme letters of the era with the blue, thin-as-tissue paper, he wrote that he was suffering from what he thought was tonsillitis, and was running a very high temperature.
Nov. 23: “My cold is improving but I still can’t talk too well. Today it was 100 (38°C) in the shade; some places downtown 140 degrees (60°C). I am feeling thirsty all of the time.”
Another Nov. 23 letter (he wrote every day, sometimes more than once): “Today I have one hell of a clogged-up windpipe. I can hardly talk.”
Nov. 24: “Well, today is the day, great or lousy – I am scared – The temperature will be around 102 (39°C) in the shade … I didn’t sleep too well. I coughed most of the night away. When I get home, I’m going to get my chest and throat looked at.”
Harry knew that he was not in top form. He was training, doggedly, with a mustard plaster taped to his chest. But he was face to face with the biggest dilemma of his life, the ultimate Catch-22 – damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If he took himself out of the race, he knew the media would crucify him. If he ran and failed to win, the result would be exactly the same – they would come down on him like a whirlwind. He told himself that he had to go out there, that whatever it took, he had to give his all to win.
“They have never let me forget that I was a failure at Rome,” he said. "Although I pulled a leg muscle in the preliminary heats, some of my critics led everyone to believe I choked up. It has been a hard dose of medicine for me to take.
“I must win here, and I must win in the Olympics in Tokyo to get out from under this cloud … I feel I must win a medal to prove myself. My aim is to win the 100, and then I will feel I have got over a hump.”
Neither of his coaches, John Minichiello or Bill Bowerman, had they been allowed to be there, would have let him run.
Sick or not, Jerome managed to excite the crowd when he ran the first heat of the preliminary round of the 100-yard dash. Reports said that he never turned on the full power, yet was clocked at 9.4 seconds to tie the Games record.
At the gun [in the final], Kenya’s Seraphina Antao, a runner Jerome had beaten three times that year, was first out of the blocks. Something seemed to happen to Harry at the 50-yard mark. Tom Robinson of the Bahamas caught up and passed him at 70 yards. Jerome quit running and crossed the tape in a slow trot. He was last.
He rubbed his leg and, struggling to hold his head up, jogged slowly back the length of the grandstand in front of the silent stares of some 25,000 spectators. He had to hide, to figure out what had gone so wrong. Trying to get away in his misery, he even had trouble finding the right hallway leading to the dressing room. “I don’t know,” he kept repeating.
“I tried so hard, so damn hard,” Jerome said. “Just when everything was going so well … my training, my school … I thought I was in perfect shape. I was trying to beat Antao. When I saw him ahead, my whole edge went off, and I sort of collapsed. There was no real pain. I just tried too hard. I don’t think I pulled a muscle. He (Antao) got off the blocks real fine. There was just him and me. I tried to catch him but just couldn’t make it.”
Jerome said he thought he could have taken a silver medal if he had hung on. “But my whole heart went out. I was aiming only for the gold.”
The race was on Saturday. But it was Monday before the real story of what had happened began to emerge. Jerome had been left to his own devices for the weekend, actually going for a swim on Sunday. Canadian officials avoided him. He was finally examined by two Perth orthopaedic surgeons who concluded that Jerome had ruptured the rectus femoris muscle on his left leg, three or four inches above the kneecap.
They recommended an operation within 24 hours. They also said that Jerome might not have felt the effects of the injury immediately and could have run 50 or 60 yards or more before the muscle injury would slow him up. It was recalled that Jerome appeared to quit running at full speed after he had gone about 75 yards in the race. This explained why Jerome was at first confused about the extent of his injury and wasn’t sure whether he had pulled a muscle.
One of the Australian doctors, Dr. George Bedbrook, said, “If this chap doesn’t get treatment he could be out of racing for life. This is urgent.”
The doctors also examined Jerome’s throat and confirmed that he was suffering from a serious infection. A third specialist, one of England’s best-known doctors, Sir Arthur Porritt, was asked to confirm the diagnosis. He concurred with the Perth specialist’s recommendation for an immediate operation on his leg muscle. Porritt said that if Jerome had stayed to run the 220, his track career could have been ruined.
Harry was adamant that he did not want the operation to take place in Australia; he wanted to go home. He left on the first available plane, an Air India flight that left for Sydney shortly after midnight.
The operation on Jerome’s leg took place just in the nick of time. The muscles in his left thigh had already begun to atrophy. He went immediately from the airport to the operating room at Vancouver General Hospital on November 29, four days after the disastrous run in Perth. The then-challenging surgery was performed by Dr. Hector Gillespie, team doctor for the B.C. Lions football club, who operated for free. Harry spent six weeks in hospital and six months in a full-leg cast, with everyone wondering whether he would ever walk normally again, let alone run.
He started training, slowly and deliberately, as soon as the cast was off. First he learned to walk without crutches, then he jogged and started weight training and, finally, he began to run again. By the end of the summer, he had worked himself into good enough condition to, with a slight limp, run a quarter of a mile. By the standard of most mortals, his determination was off the scale.
He returned to the University of Oregon to prepare for his comeback. “There’s no doubt that it (the surgery) was a complete success as far as the leg and muscle are concerned,” said Bowerman, as Jerome trained for his first comeback event at the Telegram-Maple Leaf Indoor Games in Toronto on January 20. Bowerman added that it was unlikely that Jerome would go “full blast” in Toronto.
The race was over 50 yards. He placed third in his qualifying heat, with a time of 5.4 seconds. He finished fourth in the final. The winner, Tom Robinson, clocked 5.3 seconds. “It wasn’t too bad after the long layoff,” Jerome said.
Within a month, Harry was back in wining form. He placed second in a meet in Winnipeg, and on Feb. 28, in Portland, Ore., he equalled the officially recognized world record for the 60-yard dash, covering the distance in six seconds flat.
“It is the greatest comeback in track-and-field history. It was a combination of Jerome’s spirit and his doctor’s skill that did it,” a happy Bill Bowerman rhapsodized. It made Jerome the only runner in memory to share four world records at the same time, the others being the 100 metres, 100 yards and 4 x 400 relay.