Dennis Mitchell still remembers the faces in the crowd. Who are you? they seemed to be saying.
And the journalists. They didn't ask him a single question. He had just won a 100-meter race in France four years ago, complicating a duel between Ben Johnson, freed from his suspension for steroid use, and Carl Lewis, who wore Johnson's repossessed Olympic crown.The spectators seemed confused, unsure how to respond. Then singing broke out. Mitchell had won the race, but the fans were singing Happy Birthday to Lewis.
"I wasn't getting the respect I wanted and deserved," Mitchell said. "I felt I was being overshadowed. So I created a personality that would bring attention to myself."
If he couldn't get noticed as a sprinter, maybe he could draw the spotlight as an action figure. The Green Machine, he called himself. He would wear lime green unitards and lime green shoes. And he would prepare for each race with a sort of karate maneuever on the track, which lent him a feeling of invincibility.
This season, he shaved his head and accessorized with an eyebrow ring. In two weeks, he would like to pick up a piece of jewelry that would complete the look, namely an Olympic gold medal.
As the world's fastest man, Mitchell, 30, would finally have all the attention he covets. And he would have earned it with the legitimacy of his speed, not the garishness of his wardrobe. He won the Olympic trials in 9.92 seconds, leading wire to wire, holding off Mike Marsh, Jon Drummond and a vicious set of leg cramps.
Since the trials, though, Mitchell has run unevenly in Europe, while Frank Fredericks of Namibia has run 9.86 and 9.87, stunning times surpassed only by the 9.85 that Leroy Burrell ran two years ago in Lausanne, Switzerland.
"I'm going to look at it like this - to beat him you're going to have to break the world record," said Mitchell, the 1992 bronze medalist who was to complete his pre-Olympic tuneups at a meet Sunday night at Duke University.
His ordinary times in Europe shouldn't set off alarm bells, Mitchell said. Every season is landscaped with peaks and valleys. He trained hard before going to Europe and felt tired, he said.
Now he enters a period of rest and recovery before the climb back up the Olympic mountain. Three sprinters, he suggested, have the best chance of reaching the gold-medal summit: himself; Fredericks, the 1992 silver medalist; and Donovan Bailey of Canada, the 1995 world champion.
"Frankie, I think he'd be the guy I'd focus on," Mitchell said.
And Bailey?
"There are certain running styles I'm going to be concerned with at the Games and other running styles that I'm not," said Mitchell, who is known for his blistering starts. "I'm going to go out there and set the pace. For those who are not on that pace with me, I'm not going to worry about them. Bailey's strength is to come from behind, so I'm going to be very aggressive attacking his style of running. Hopefully, the pace I set at Atlanta is something he won't be able to challenge."
The son of a former Marine Corps drill sergeant, Mitchell began running with his twin sister, Denise, when they were 6 years old and living in San Diego. His father, Edward, helped coach a team called Mickey's Missiles.
Instead of hiring a babysitter, Edward Mitchell brought his twins to the track, where the long-jump pits became their sand box. Dennis kept pestering his father to let him run, and finally his father did. Except that Mickey's Missiles was a girls' team, and Dennis had to wear a girl's uniform, his mother, Lenora, said.
"It wasn't a fun experience," Dennis said.
Eventually, the family moved to Sicklerville, N.J., where, on holidays, Dennis and his brother, Anthony, would race from light pole to light pole in the street. Dennis and Denise ran for a nearby track club coached by Bill and Evelyn Lewis, who had a son named Carl.
The twins received scholarships to the University of Florida, where Denise finished third in the 400 at the 1987 national collegiate championships and Dennis lowered his personal best in the 100 to 10.12 seconds, raising himself into the world's top-10 rankings.
By 1988, Mitchell had finished fourth at the Olympics, while Lewis was awarded the gold medal. At the 1991 world championships in Tokyo, Lewis won in 9.86 seconds, then a world record, while Mitchell finished third in a personal-best 9.91 seconds.