Above and Beyond by Bill Livingston

Author:Bill Livingston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kent State University Press

Altius

Alone in his torment, Mack boarded the first bus of the day for ANZ Stadium in Brisbane, Australia. It was September 7, 2001, the day of the pole vault final in the Goodwill Games. He had reached the city two weeks earlier, but he was hobbled by shooting pains that coursed up and down the outside of both legs. He had done little since arriving except try to quell the mutiny in his limbs. Cocooned in a headset that was playing electronic music whose repetitious beat nearly put him in a trance, Mack barely noticed the surroundings—the Brisbane River, Moreton Bay, the sky that soon would fill with unfamiliar stars.

Begun in the 1980s by American media mogul Ted Turner as an antidote to the boycott-plagued Olympics, the Goodwill Games bounced between East and West every four years until Time Warner bought them. In Australia, the goal was to capitalize on the sports fervor created by the Sydney Olympics a year earlier. It had already been announced before they began that 2001 would be the last of the Goodwill Games.

In Brisbane, the Games’ last hurrah on the international sports stage would be Mack’s first. Brisbane began in 1824 as a penal colony, one to which the most recalcitrant prisoners in Sydney were sent. It would be the place where Tim Mack’s economic bondage ended.

Pain was nothing new to Mack. It’s a constant in pole vaulting. Shoulder pain is caused by the stress of planting the pole and bending it like William Tell ready to core some apples. Leg pain is caused by the effects of the sprint to the box, and the jarring plant of the pole. Pole-vaulters often overwork the legs, particularly, because they are fierce competitors, driven athletes who think they can persevere, push through the curtain of pain, and find the skyway hidden behind it.

Still, Mack was hurt, he was alone, and he was close to broke.

Brisbane also can be a harsh place. One of the biggest land grabs in history took place in the Australian state of Queensland, with the white settlers displacing more than 100,000 Aborigines from over 200 tribes before the 20th century began. Historically, Queensland and its capital, Brisbane, have been havens for conservative, sometimes extremist, politics. Gun owners have inordinate influence.

Its image of a place red in tooth and claw was more than a little dated by the new millennium, but ANZ (for Australia-New Zealand) Stadium still was no place for someone not ready to give his all.

“It was really where I learned to compete,” Mack said. “It was one of the last meets of the season, and it tested everything about me: Could I get it together for one competition? Should I have tried to run instead of resting? Could I adequately prepare? Could I still vault without swinging on a pole or vaulting for two weeks? Could I get ready mentally?”

Mack knew he had no stress fracture and that nothing was torn that needed a surgical repair. But he had to manage the pain better.

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