IF THERE is a concept such as justice in track and field, then on some far-off Olympic podium there is a medal awaiting Dean Macey. Four years ago, before the Sydney Games, it was pushing credibility to suggest that there were medals left in the legs of Kelly Holmes — look at her now. Macey, Great Britain’s top decathlete, would do well to take a look, too, and take heart. Not that heart is a qual ity in which he is lacking.
In the Athens Olympic stadium he performed true to type. In his words, “he put it all on the line”. But yesterday the ravages of injury ensured his “all” was not enough. The medal that seemed a faint possibility on Monday night simply drifted farther and farther from his grasp. He threw a personal best in the discus, yet still the three athletes in the medal places bettered him. Some day, maybe, body will be as strong as soul and this will not be the case.
Macey finished fourth yesterday, just as he had in Sydney. It did not help that the medal-winners’ final scores made this the strongest Olympic field ever. It probably did not help either that, to keep him going, so much physiotherapy was required on Monday night and yesterday morning that there was room for only three hours’ sleep. After seven events — and his strong discus — he was in fourth place but already requiring injury or a thunderbolt to help him up the order. He then followed a disappointing pole vault with a disappointing javelin. These are technical events that, had he been fitter through the year, he would have been better equipped to master.
However, it was his sprinting that let him down. Or, more to the point, his right hamstring. He lost points on the 100 metres, the 400 metres and the 110 metres hurdles, although perhaps most telling was Monday’s long jump, in which he settled for an average first-round leap because a twinge of the muscle cautioned him against going again. You clearly do not win a medal in an Olympic field when holding back like that.
Nearly 500 points ahead of him last night was Roman Sebrle, the gold medal- winner and world record-holder from the Czech Republic, who has replaced Daley Thompson as Olympic record-holder, too — a man who comes back year after year in shape to compete for the top spot. To watch Macey completing that final, strength- sapping 1,500 metres was to wonder whether fate will ever bless him with the opportunity to compete as freely as Sebrle.
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We wondered that about Holmes and she has had her moment. And Macey surely has comparable talent. But the stresses put on a decathlete’s body are such that it is possible that his moment will never come. At 26, he has time on his side but one day the willpower that he brings to his sport will no longer get him to the start line, let alone to the medal podium.
He, of course, has faith in himself. “I’ll take this on the chin and go to Beijing,” he said, when his main emotion was not disappointment but encouragement that he is still up there with the best. “I know I was fourth last time, but it’s totally different. This feels so good. I’m back.”
If he is to stay “back”, it is his force of character that will sustain him. It was this that did so in the 1,500 metres last night, the final event, when a medal was clearly not a possibility. From the gun, he was near the front, pushing the pace, still competing until the end, still laying it all on the line. One day, one must hope that his “all” will suffice.