Backstage With Untold Track and Field History
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Teen Sensation Finds Favor Abroad While Leading U.S. Team
By Marc Bloom for DyeStat
Part 2 | Part 1
Lynn Bjorklund, 18, 1975 AAU 3,000-meter champion in a high school record 9:10.6, and the other women’s qualifiers for the annual U.S. vs. USSR dual meet, were rushed from the White Plains (N.Y.) nationals into a Manhattan hotel for departure to Kyiv with the American squad.
“We were so naïve,” said Cindy Bremser, the second 3,000 qualifier, who roomed with Lynn. “It was like, ‘Guess what? You just made a U.S. team for overseas. Get packing.’” A USA uniform and free bag — oh, the joy! The women had no passports but officials provided them within 24 hours.
Bjorklund and Bremser hit it off. Bremser, then 22, was one of the first collegiate female varsity runners, starting to compete in her junior year, on the heels of Title IX, at the University of Wisconsin in 1973. “I needed the exercise,” she told me.
The ground-breaking roomies were shy, but not when it came to their running. They were itching for a break-the-ice workout the night before the trip but team officials forbade them from leaving the hotel and going out into New York City streets without chaperones. Plan B: they ran up and down the hotel stairwells.
While Lynn’s eating and weight issues had injuries knocking at her door — and were easy to hide from roommates as well as family — for Bremser the trip was a stepping stone to future worldwide success: Pan American Games 1500 silver in 1983 in Caracas. Weltklasse runner-up 3,000 silver in Zurich in an 8:38.60 PR in 1984. World Cup 3,000 bronze in Canberra, Australia in 1985. Goodwill Games 5,000 bronze in Moscow in 1986.
In ’84, Bremser came within a half-second of an Olympic medal in the Mary Decker-Zola Budd 3,000 fiasco at Los Angeles. From behind, Bremser had a front row seat to the collision, which led to the victory by Maricica Puică of Romania, as Bremser wound up fourth. (It was the first women’s Olympic 3,000, and of course the first marathon, won by Joan Benoit Samuelson.)
With the shoulders of a swimmer, Puică drew suspicion, given the growing talk of drug use among women within the Soviet bloc. After the Games, when Bremser gave a school talk and showed the race video, one student, she said, piped up and asked, “Why did you run against a man?”
Once in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, Bjorklund felt no burden of international drama,…
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