Week 1

Wednesday, September 19

Lighting the Fuse

1976 Men's Olympic Marathon Trials

The Bill Rodgers Running Center in Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace was pulsing with the energy of marathon week, crammed with finishers from the previous day's 110th running. And there at a table in the corner sat the eponymous owner himself, signing autographs and offering congratulations to one and all.

On one of the store's TVs, a rare tape of the 1976 Men's Olympic Marathon Trials was playing. Grainy and discolored, it featured the confrontation between the two undisputed leaders of American marathoning at the time—Rodgers, the national record-holder, and Frank Shorter, the reigning Olympic marathon champion—as they battled for Olympic berths in Eugene, Oregon, on May 22, 1976.

The running boom, which has lasted until the present day, hung on the cusp of that May morning in Eugene. Some 410,000 people finished a marathon in 2006, compared to only about 25,000 in America's bicentennial year. Much of the growth can be attributed to the Shorter-Rodgers rivalry.

Coming on the heels of Shorter's 1972 Olympic Marathon gold medal in Munich—along with Kenny Moore's fourth-place finish and Jack Bacheler's ninth place—America had every reason to expect medal contenders from the '76 Trials in Eugene. Eighty-seven men qualified and 77 started the Trials race, but up front there was never a doubt about who would take the first two spots on the team.

"People figured that Frank and Bill should make the team," said Don Kardong of Spokane, WA, the eventual third member of the '76 Montreal squad. "A couple of guys like Kenny Moore and Gary Tuttle were either sick or had come down with an untimely injury. So the question was third."

Rodgers, the 1975 Boston Marathon champion, had his distinctive right-arm whip in evidence, a sign of full engagement. Frank, the cool Brahmin, the doctor's son, the prep-school and Yale grad with the University of Florida law degree, dictated policy in his iconic Florida Track Club singlet.

Even with Rodgers at his side (they seemed always to run shoulder-to-shoulder), Shorter strode alone, carried effortlessly by his slightly pigeon-toed stride, aloof, the unwavering crowned king. His strategy mirrored Munich, and could be described by Dashiell Hammett in his book Red Harvest: "Plans are all right sometimes. And sometimes just stirring things up is all right—if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top."

Well, Shorter didn't mind stirring things up. And he was plenty tough enough to see what came to the top. It was a strategy that had earned him one gold medal and would take him to a silver before the year was out.

"Frank made a move at eight miles," remembers Rodgers. "Barry Brown went, and so did I. It was a hard move, and that was it. Boom! Then Barry folded around ten, and it was just me and Frank. Hammer pace."

Still the amateur, Rodgers wore an unmarked white singlet that stretched against his lean frame. Though he'd taken the bronze medal at the 1975 World Cross Country Championships in Morocco—where Shorter was 20th—Rodgers remained the everyman on the wing, still ascending, challenging the accepted order. As he raced, he looked to engage Shorter, turning to his rival and searching for ways to invade his concentration.

"We ran together [to make the team]," remembers Rodgers. "Frank was focused on winning, but I had broken his American record the year before, and he knew I was a potential threat. He was going back to defend his Olympic gold, and the fastest guy in the country was running next to him."

Notwithstanding, Shorter ran placid and detached, the man in charge, almost disdainful in his impersonal precision. The combination track man/marathoner refused to even acknowledge the competition as he marshaled his forces for an Olympic defense.

"We were 1:37 at 20," recalled Shorter years later, "then we eased it in."

Behind the pair, another side-by-side tussle was taking shape for the third spot on the team. Kardong and Tony Sandoval, both out of Stanford University, and each with the promise of greatness ahead, seesawed back and forth until Kardong emerged the stronger of the two. But up front it was all Bill and Frank.

"We hammered each other as much as anyone in a race," remembers Shorter of the effort.

"We weren't friends then as we are now," acknowledges Rodgers. "The rivalry was for real. It wasn't something built up by the press. We began to clash. He beat me. I beat him. And it was that way for a long time."

With their places on the Olympic team sewn up, the two cut back slightly over the final 10K, though Shorter managed to secure the win with a final mile move that Rodgers didn't see coming, and then couldn't answer.

"It was very subtle," Rodgers explains. "Frank was a great strategist, and he did surprise me a little. It wasn't a devastating move; he just edged away. You almost don't notice it, but he was just a little stronger that day."

Shorter won by seven seconds in 2:11:51, giving just a small reminder who was still number one. Kardong took the measure of the still-green Sandoval to earn the final position on the Montreal team, finishing nearly two minutes behind Rodgers in 2:13:54. 

"Frank was a winner," says Rodgers. "He had the drive to win. I was just euphoric to make the team, and it was a hard effort, 2:11 on a warm day."

Shorter would go on to earn the silver medal in Montreal behind East Germany's Waldemar Cierpinski. Kardong rounded into form in the nine weeks before the Games tand  finished a close fourth, while Rodgers hobbled home a disappointing 40th, hampered by a foot injury. 

But less than three months later, at the inaugural five-borough New York City Marathon, Rodgers would take out his Olympic frustration with a mighty 2:10:10 victory. Shorter would finish second, some three minutes behind. And thus did their fortunes turn once and for all.

The instant appeal of the New York City five-borough experience signaled the final shock wave of the running boom, and the era of the big-city marathon as spectacle spread quickly across the globe. Rodgers would power on to win four straight New York crowns—landing him on the cover of Sports Illustrated on two of those occasions—and earn three number-one world rankings. He added three more Boston Marathon titles as well and another American record, in 1979.

After his fourth-place finish in the 1976 Trials, Sandoval would go on to win the 1980 Olympic Trials in Buffalo, NY. But with President Carter's boycott in place, Sandoval would miss out on what could well have been another American Olympic Marathon medal in Moscow.

Shorter would never again reach the heights of '76. The majesty of his career came in the first half of the 1970s, before the media at large picked up on the sport. By 1978, a series of injuries and surgeries left him incapable of training at his old level. But his work had been done. 

Both Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers reached and maintained iconic status, and to this day they remain the two most famous American names in the sport. Eugene's Olympic Trials Marathon was perhaps the one and only time the two met on equal footing in the marathon when the mantle of #1 was up for grabs.