Brazilian middle-distance legend talks about why finding love on the eve of the Los Angeles Games helped him win gold 40 years ago
It has been 40 years since Joaquim Cruz beat Seb Coe to the Olympic 800m title in Los Angeles. He still looks bronzed and supremely fit, but he has flecks of grey in his hair these days and his battle-weary body rejects running. Aged 61, he prefers to walk.
“I find enjoyment and all the balance I need in the morning with a three-mile walk,” he smiles. “I used to run but it was too aggressive and hurting me a lot. I sometimes shuffle or take the bike if I want to sweat. But I don’t miss running.”
In the history of middle-distance running there are few sights quite as majestic as Cruz in full flight during the summer of 1984. The tall Brazilian with the long raking stride dominated the 800m at the LA Games, surging away from Coe in the final to clock an Olympic record of 1:43.00.
Three weeks later in Cologne he ran 1:41.77 to miss Coe’s world record by four hundredths of a second. Altogether he ran inside 1:43 half a dozen times as he lit up the tracks of Europe. Despite injuries, he came close to successfully defending his title in Seoul four years later, too, finishing runner-up to Paul Ereng of Kenya.
For the past 19 years Cruz has worked at US Paralympics and says he rarely looks back to the 1980s. But his memory of those years is still sharp and he tells a great story from the 1981 World Cup in Rome where he finished a distant sixth aged just 18 in a race dominated by Coe.
“A couple of days before the competition I saw Seb training and I was fascinated by how he was able to move,” Cruz remembers. “My race in Rome was terrible. I choked. But I was putting my sweats back on and he was kind enough to stop by and shake my hand and say a few words. I don’t think he realised that I didn’t speak any English at the time, though!
“Later I promised myself that I wouldn’t feel that way again in a race. So in 1984 we were waiting for the medal ceremony in LA and I asked him ‘hey, what did you tell me in Rome when you shook my hand?’ He said, ‘I told you that you were going to be a great champion’. I was lost for words.”
Joaquim Cruz (Mark Shearman)
Coe’s prediction came true as Cruz claimed the Olympic crown three years after finishing well behind the Briton in Rome. It was a rocky road to Los Angeles, however.
At the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, for example, Cruz and Peter Elliott…
CLICK HERE to Read the Full Original Article at AW…