She’s a breed apart
Canine partner spurs Devers toward new records, medals
Karen Rosen - Staff
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Gail Devers’ training partner is fast enough to keep up with her, always shows up for practice and never complains about the workout.
He does, however, get upset if there’s too much time between the “set” command and the gun.
“He’ll start barking,” Devers said.
Meet Kaleb Braxton, an 8-pound Pomeranian who “doesn’t think he’s a dog,” said his doting owner. “He thinks he’s a human. He’s a little fur person.”
“He understands everything she says,” said Monica Moore, Devers’ best friend and the mother of three children Devers is godmother to. “He listens to her more than my kids listen to me.”
For the past two years, Kaleb, which means “faithful” in the Bible, has been Devers’ constant companion at her homes in Duluth and Northridge, Calif. She carries him to the movies in a bag. The little dog will travel to Palo Alto, Calif., for the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, which start today and run through Sunday.
Devers will compete in the 100-meter hurdles, a race considered her specialty even though her three Olympic gold medals came in the 100-meter dash (1992 and 1996) and the 400-meter relay (1996).
Kaleb wore a tuxedo at last year’s nationals, where Devers won her eighth hurdles title, but he won’t let Devers put clothes on him anymore. It must be the canine in him coming out. However, he smells like baby powder because, Devers said, “he can’t come in my house smelling like a dog.”
Devers wasn’t looking for a 6-week old pup like Kaleb — too much hair, and she wanted a female— when she saw him at a pet store. But it was love at first sight for him. Devers returned the next day to take Kaleb home despite fears he’d be “eaten up” by her three Rottweilers. The big dogs adopted him immediately, then all three died of cancer within a two-month span. Now, Devers said, “Kaleb is all I have. He’s my heart, and he’s got all of them wrapped up in him.”
Kaleb’s also her whole track team. When Bobby Kersee, the only coach Devers has ever known, became too busy two years ago, she started coaching herself.
“It’s me, God and Kaleb,” Devers said. “Kaleb is the smallest and youngest I’ve ever trained with, but the most inspirational. We have our conversations every day — ‘Help Mommy get there.’ He’s learned to cut straight across the track instead of running the whole curve, so he’s in front of me and I have to go get him. I didn’t teach him that.”
Kaleb is trying to help his owner get to Paris for the World Championships in August. At age 36, Devers is still skimming hurdles and knocking down records. Earlier this year, she broke Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s American record in the indoor 60-meter hurdles with a time of 7.78 seconds at the Millrose Games in New York. She then lowered it to 7.74.
“We love the fact that Gail has taken all of her experience and is now putting it to bear by coaching herself,” said Craig Masback, executive director of USA Track and Field. “The fact that her dog is instrumental to that is a wonderful aspect of her personality and the way that she’s keeping all of this fresh and exciting for herself. If it was the same old environment and training system, you can imagine she might have gotten tired of it.”
Bitten by injuries
Unfortunately, injuries continue to, well, dog her.
Devers was slowed by a right hamstring injury on April 24 while warming up at the Penn Relays on a chilly day. For three weeks, she said, “Kaleb and I were doing absolutely nothing, with our feet up watching TV Land.”
On May 24, Devers tested her hamstring at the Prefontaine Classic and led over five of the 10 hurdles before falling apart because of poor form. “I needed to figure out if the leg was OK,” Devers said. “People say, ‘Once a hurdler, always a hurdler,’ which is true, but I was 50,000 feet over the hurdle.”
She went home and worked on her form with the help of a video camera.
Coaching herself has “forced me to become more of a student of my event,” Devers said. “I’m still trying to utilize my speed.”
She calls herself “a sprinter that happens to go over hurdles,” yet knows she’s not the best technician. “I was told in high school that my form was atrocious,” Devers said, “and that always stuck in my head. I don’t want to work so much on mechanics that I negate my speed.”
So how fast does Gail the Coach think Gail the Athlete can run? “Gail the Coach, she doesn’t deal with times,” Devers said. “She deals with, ‘Did you clear the hurdle? Did you throttle back?’ Do the mechanics right, and the times will come. Gail the Athlete has been conditioned by Gail the Coach, so she doesn’t talk about times either.”
But Gail the Realist knows that if she runs her best times, the victories will come — even what she calls “the elusive gold medal” in the Olympic 100-meter hurdles.
And yet, she said, “I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for.” She said fast times are more important to her, running a perfect race.
‘She never gives up’
But those closest to Devers believe the hurdles gold medal is driving the three-time world champion even as she denies it. “I believe until that has been accomplished, that’ll be something that all through her life she’ll wish she had done,” said Celestine Phillips, Monica Moore’s mother, who has become a second mom to Devers.
“Gail is a determined person,” added Moore, Devers’ former UCLA roommate. “She never gives up at anything she does.”
After competing in the 1988 Olympics, Devers contracted Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition that caused doctors to consider amputating both of her feet. She recovered and was favored to win the hurdles in Barcelona in 1992, especially after claiming the 100-meter dash title. But Devers hit the final hurdle and practically crawled across the finish line in fifth place. In Atlanta, she was fourth. Four years later, a stunning American-record time of 12.33 seconds made Devers the favorite in Sydney. She pulled up in the semifinals with an injured hamstring but was pleased that no one beat her time of 12.63 seconds in the prelims.
“Because no one will let me retire, I have to keep stepping up my game,” said Devers, who eventually wants to write poetry or her memoirs and expand her charitable foundation. “You just don’t understand my fan mail. People of all ages say, ‘You can’t retire yet. You’re doing it for us, the over-30-year-old women, over-35.’”
And why retire, Devers said, “when I still enjoy what I’m doing and I’m still learning my event?”
She’s learning to listen to her body, too. “If my body says no, I go home,” she said.
Yet she refuses to believe that she’s 36 going on 37 in November.
“I look at myself as I’m 19,” she said, “regardless of when my mother said she had me. I think there is so much I have left to learn, and I do what I can to take care of my body. I’ve never had a drink of anything; my strongest drink is Welch’s Grape Soda. I’ve never smoked anything. I don’t have junk in my body. . . . My body is clean, so I can be 19 if I want to.”
She can even get by without regular sleep. Devers is an insomniac who watches endless reruns on TV Land (she can’t wait for the “I Love Lucy” marathon in August). Kaleb, meanwhile, has his milk, gets under the covers at 7:20 p.m., and sleeps 12 to 15 hours. Then it’s time to chase Devers again as she chases her ghosts in the 100-meter hurdles.
“All he’s ever known,” she said, “is track and field.”
