By Scott M. Reid, The Orange County Register –
LONDON — She has been gone for almost four years now, and still he couldn’t let go.
For four mostly trying years, hurdler Felix Sanchez had been consumed with fulfilling a promise to his late grandmother, Lilian Morcelo, a pursuit that has left him torn apart by his loss and empowered by her memory.
(PHOTO: USA’s Allyson Felix leads in the women’s 200 meters semifinals at Olympic Stadium during the London 2012 Olympics on Monday, August 6, 2012 in London, England.)
So as Sanchez, the former USC star competing for the Dominican Republic, raced through the Olympic Games 400-meter hurdles Monday night, Morcelo was with him every step of the way, right where she always has been — next to his heart.
Sanchez, the 2004 Olympic champion who since had fallen on mostly hard times, started strong Monday, running with his grandmother’s photograph pinned behind his race number.
He came off the 10th and final hurdle in the lead. As his legs continued to race at full speed toward the finish line, his mind traveled somewhere else all together; that space deep within our souls and minds where the present turns in slow motion allowing a lifetime to speed through, years of emotions growing more vivid until they become overwhelming.
As Sanchez crossed the finish line at Olympic Stadium all of it came rushing out in a raw scream before he collapsed onto the track, unable to bear the burden of his loss or his promise any longer.
“I ran with all my heart,” he said. On his knees, hunched over sobbing, he reached for his grandmother’s photograph, placed it gently on the red Olympic oval and kissed it, a promise finally fulfilled. “I’ve been emotional all week, thinking about her,” he said, “thinking if I could win.”
Sanchez, 34, also delivered one of the most unexpected victories of the London Games, crossing the finish line in 47.63 seconds, the exact time as his winning mark in Athens eight years earlier.
In upsetting heavily favored Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson, who had been undefeated in 2012, Sanchez also became just the third man in history to regain the Olympic 400 hurdles gold medal, joining the great Edwin Moses and Angelo Taylor. Culson finished third Monday in 48.10 with Michael Tinsley of the U.S. taking the silver in 47.91.
Sanchez’s triumph also completed an unlikely comeback in which he chased for four years the promise he made to his grandmother and himself in a moment of his deepest despair.
“The day she died it broke my heart,” he said.
Sanchez was born in New York City to Dominican parents. He moved to San Diego with his mother when he was 2, Morcelo soon following them west. Her grandson would go on to dominate the 400 hurdles in the first half of the 2000s, winning an Olympic gold medal, a pair of World titles and 43 consecutive races between 2001 and 2004. The win streak was ended by a calf injury, the first in a series of injuries — stress fractures, pulled hamstrings, Achilles’ tendon issues — that would hamper Sanchez’s attempts to regain his place as the world’s top hurdler.
But noting was more devastating than the Blackberry email alert that woke him up at the Athletes Village in Beijing four years ago on the morning of the 400 hurdles first round. Morcelo, 72, had died in the night.
“That really affected me,” Sanchez recalled. “I cried the whole day. I was on the fence about even running.”
He ran but could not pull himself together, finishing last in his heat in 51.50, nearly four seconds off his personal best.
“I ran but I ran badly and I made a promise that day that I would win a medal for her,” Sanchez said. “It took me four years.”
The injuries continued to plague Sanchez after Beijing although at times he showed brief glimpses of his old world beating form.
“I’ve had a lot of setbacks in the last eight years,” he said. “I really wondered if I could come back. But I was so dominant for so long. When you are so dominant you have a sense of confidence. I always had a glimmer of hope. I was running well, then I would get injured, then as soon as I was healthy again I would get another injury.
“But I knew I was running well enough to compete with these guys. I never lost that motivation to be number one again. Having all that success. That’s what kept me going.”
That and the promise.
Sanchez suffered a calf injury in a Diamond League race in Rome in May that sidelined him for two weeks and then finished fifth in another Diamond League meet in London just weeks before the Olympics.
But when he returned to London late last month he began to find inspiration in his memories of his grandmother.
“Just as a motivator and just as a reminder of how special she was and how much this Games meant to be being how old I was,” Sanchez said.
His confidence was boosted further in the Olympic semifinals where he ran his fastest time since Athens. As he prepared for Monday’s final, he wrote Abuela, grandmother in Spanish, on his spikes and pinned her picture to his race number.
“So she could run close to my heart,” Sanchez said.
“I knew if I could put it all together I could win again,” he continued. “I thought it would have to be a perfect race for me and it was.”
Running in Lane 7, the top four medal contenders, Culson, Taylor, Tinsley and two-time World champion Kerron Clement of the U.S., on the inside of him, Sanchez went out hard. “Probably too hard,” he said.
As race came off the final curve into the home stretch, Taylor led Culson slightly. The pair and Sanchez took the next hurdle together and then Sanchez began to pull away.
“I came off the tenth hurdle and I was running hard but for about three or four meters I was just kind of waiting for somebody to pass me,” Sanchez said. “And nobody passed me and it just got surreal and I was overwhelmed with emotions.”
He broke down again on the medal podium, sobbing uncontrollably as he buried his head in his hands.
“I just wanted her to be proud of me,” he said
Then as Sanchez stood there late Monday night, a second gold medal and a promise now resting over his heart, a light rain began to fall. He took it as a sign.
“It made me feel like she was crying tears of joy with me.”
