Sprinter Allyson Felix seeks happy ending in Rio to her 'year of adversity'
LOS ANGELES — Allyson Felix crouched into a sprinter’s stance 80 meters from her coach, Bobby Kersee, with strict instructions: Cover the distance in no more than 11.80 seconds.
Kersee blew his whistle three times. Suddenly Felix was bolting down the track.
When she hit the 40-meter mark during the recent training session at Drake Stadium on UCLA’s campus, Kersee’s lips were moving almost as fast as Felix’s feet.
“Left arm, dig!" he shouted. “Come on! Dig it, dig it, dig!"
Felix sailed past the finish line and Kersee checked his stopwatch: 10.98 seconds. Having run almost a full second faster than instructed, Felix, winner of four Olympic gold medals, walked back toward the starting line when a familiar voice boomed.
“Allyson," Kersee barked, “you can’t take all day to get down there!"
Felix quickened her pace with the Summer Olympics in Brazil fast approaching during what she calls her “year of adversity."
In June, her beloved Yorkie died. In July, an ankle injury cost her a chance to make the U.S. Olympic team in the 200 meters. That, in turn, squelched her longtime dream of winning gold medals in the 200 and the 400 at the same Olympics.
Two weeks later, while continuing preparations to compete in the 400, 4x100 relay and 4x400 relay at the Rio Games, Felix’s grandfather died.
Kersee keeps pushing. Dig it, dig it, dig!
“He helps me be able to refocus and regroup and kind of shift the goals and keep going,’’ Felix told Paste BN Sports. “That’s how Bobby is."
Kersee, 62, is notoriously demanding, calls himself crazy and puts his athletes through torturous workouts. Felix, 30, exudes serenity and sanity.
“I think me and Bobby are two completely opposite people,’’ Felix said. “I don’t think you could get too much more opposite than us, but there’s something that works about the partnership."
Crazy Bobby
They met almost 12 years ago at a restaurant called Coco’s in Southern California. Felix had just won the silver medal in the 200 at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and was looking for a new coach, in part, because hers planned to leave the state. Someone suggested Kersee, whose resume ranked among the best in track and field.
He had coached some of the all-time great female stars, including his wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and sprinters Florence Griffith Joyner and Gail Devers. Felix loved the 100 and 200. But Kersee said he’d coach her only if she ran the grueling 400, too.
“Frankly, I thought that got me fired before I got hired,’’ Kersee told Paste BN Sports. “But they called me back."
During the meeting at Coco’s in 2004, Kersee had asked Felix to share her biggest dreams. With some trepidation, as if it were overly ambitious, she said she wanted to win four gold medals at a single Olympics.
Kersee began talking about a plan to make it happen.
“I walked away thinking this is a person who truly believes in me,’’ Felix said.
Felix hired Kersee and soon after met someone else — Crazy Bobby.
His workouts were unrelenting. So were his expectations. But Kersee’s other athletes marveled at Felix, said Joanna Hayes, who won the gold medal in the 100 at the 2004 Olympics and became one of Felix’s closest friends.
“She was just out there like destroying the workouts,’’ Hayes said. “We were like, ‘We don’t think you’re real. You’re a robot. You don’t even go to the bathroom! You can’t be real.' "
Here’s what was happening: While Kersee let his emotions erupt, Felix kept hers contained.
“Practice with him was awful,’’ Felix said. “I was like, ‘I have made the biggest mistake of my life. This man is crazy. I don’t know about this.'
“I remember running with one of his athletes and I was literally like 100 meters behind and just thinking, ‘What am I doing? Is this ever going to come together?’."
The next year, Felix discovered what most of Kersee’s athletes say: There is a method to his madness.
At the 2005 world championships, Felix won a gold medal in the 200. The medals continued to pile up — eight more golds at the world championships and four Olympic golds that included her first individual gold, won in the 200 at the 2012 London Games.
'A turning point'
At the same time, the partnership between Kersee and Felix began to evolve. Kersee has a favorite story to illustrate the change.
In 2007, Felix had finished second in the 400 at a meet in Rome. The plan was to return to the United States. But Felix, disappointed with her performance, told Kersee she wanted to run the 400 again in Stockholm.
Felix flew to Stockholm without Kersee, who arrived later and in time to watch Felix win the race with a new personal best.
“Bobby said that race was a turning point with us, that I kind of took the lead and told him, ‘This is what needs to happen’," Felix said. “He had some choice words for me. But it ended up being like, yeah, I can come to him, I can tell him if I feel really strongly about something."
Kersee compares his relationship with Felix to the relationship Gregg Popovich had with Tim Duncan when the San Antonio Spurs won five NBA titles and to the relationship Phil Jackson had with Michael Jordan when the Chicago Bulls won six NBA titles.
“Sometimes, 'OK, fine, you call the play and I’ll watch'," Kersee said before invoking the name of Bill Belichick, who has coached the New England Patriots to four Super Bowl championships.
“You’re not going to come and tell Belichick what to do in the last two minutes of a football game,’’ Kersee said. “He’s going to tell you. And you know that. From the beginning."
The message was clear: When everything is on the line, Kersee still calls the shots. And during the recent training session at UCLA, he instructed Felix to run 250 meters and hit the 200-meter mark in 23.50 seconds.
When she rounded into the homestretch, she knew what to expect.
“Push it right now!’’ Kersee barked. “Push it!"
She sailed past the 200-meter mark, kept on sprinting for another 50 meters and was still catching her breath when Kersee approached and showed her the stopwatch.
Felix nodded. Kersee grinned.
She’d covered the distance in 23.50 seconds, delivering exactly what her coach had asked of her during her year of adversity.
“That’s what I’m talking about," Kersee said.