Olympian

Newsweek
". . . brilliantly told, rushing to a wildly exciting climax. . . as serious an effort as anyone has made to explore the tortures and indecisions of the totally dedicated athlete."


John L. Parker
"When I was a miler in college, this book was my Once a Runner."


Bill Rodgers
"Until Once A Runner, this was my favorite running novel."


Book Description
This critically acclaimed novel, first published in 1969, has for years been regarded as one of the true classics not only in the literature of footracing, but in general interest literature as well. Glanville's beautifully portrayed relationship between runner Ike Low and the eccentric and charismatic coach Sam Dee has become a set piece in the tales of athletes: Rocky, Chariots of Fire, even Long Road to Boston owe a debt to this work. There are echoes of Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as well. You will be captivated by the story of the working-class stiff, Ike Low, as Sam Dee discovers him thrashing through inconsequential races, a mediocre sprinter at a local running club. The first time I met him, I thought he was a nut case, said Ike of his coach. You are built to run the mile, Dee told him. You are the perfect combination of ectomorph-mesomorph; long calves, lean, muscular thighs and arms, chest between thirty-seven and thirty-eight, and broad, slim shoulders. A miler is the aristocrat of running. A miler is the nearest to a thoroughbred racehorse that exists on two legs. And thus begins the relationship that will transform Ike into one of the great distance runners in the world.


From the Publisher
A true classic in sports literature. With the author's introduction to the new edition.


From the Author
(From the author's introduction to the Cedarwinds edition) The Olympian was first published in the United States, by Cord McCann, in 1969 a few weeks before it appeared in England. It was given a reception for which I remain grateful not only for its generosity, its catholocity, but for the fact that American critics and reviewers understood what the book really was. "This isn't about track at all, is it?" asked Joe Garagiola, when, he interviewed me on the Today Show. From Garagiola to the critic Mark Schorer, from Howard Cosell to Jesse Owens, from Pete Axthelm to Bob Lipsyte, there was a warm general awareness of what I had tried to do. The Olympian is, of course, about track, in the sense that the background, the details of the athlete life, are first hand and authentic, based on the years I spent covering the sport and the Olympics for the London Sunday Times. It is equally true that the book has allegorical themes, that Ike Low is a symbol as well as a contemporary figure. The book may be read on any level you please; in England, the deep disappointment was that even those who liked it best took it as documentary, an essay in realism. It was never just that, even if it began, in my mind, as an image; a man and a woman, running. In athletes' singlets and shorts. A kind of closeness between them as if she were somehow supporting and standing by him. From that image flowed in time the themes of the book. Faustian effort. The athlete as victim. Tensions between the old and the young. Our alienation from the body. It is splendid to have the book in print once again in America, which received it so well. When it appeared, in 1989, in Rumania--where publication was first planned 16 years earlier--it sold 60,000 copies. Over those intervening years, one great, sinister development has taken place in athletics; the use of drugs. Quite when this began is debatable, but it seems to have been in the heavy events, shot putting, weight lifting, and the like. It spread quickly to the explosive events, and made track and field seem more Faustian then ever. Athletes who used anabolic steroids know that they are sabotaging their whole physical future, yet such is their obsession with their event that they persist, as one might have expected. Yet where once the use of drugs might have made a man a champion--as it surely did with Ben Johnson--now, not to use them has condemned athletes in many events to failure. An horrific choice. Blood doping, the use of testosterone and other abuses have followed. They were implicit in the world we have created. For the athlete is not alone, merely the product of his tormented times. If then, the shape and pattern of athletics has been radically changed by drugs, it still seems that the milers, of whom Ike Low was one, have by and large not tended to take drugs. Ike flew too near the sun, and he fell. The most potent, dangerous drug of all is such obsession with success. Even Faust who sold his soul, did not sell his body. London July, 1991


Excerpted from The Olympian by Brian Glanville. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From Chapter 2, page 29: This thing, this pain thing, in a way I saw what he meant, but in another way, I didn't understand it. Why run at all if it was going to hurt you? Sport, to me, was something you enjoyed, and if you didn't enjoy it, you packed it in. On the other hand, I could see he was right, that this sort of attitude wasn't going to get you nowhere, not with everybody else so dead serious and more or less dedicating their lives to it. Either you did it properly, or you might as well let it alone. And mind you, it wasn't like there was no enjoyment in it at all, that it was all slog. The training was hard, of course, and all the things you had to give up, but the races, they could really be great, if things were going well; so exciting that everything else in the world seemed dead; that moment when it was time to go and you felt this power thrumming away in you like a great, big engine and you knew you were going to do it, beat the lot of them. In a way it was better than actually doing it, like a meal or making love to a bird; I mean, it usually looks better beforehand. Though winning was great, too, breaking that old tape, the little, light touch against your chest, and the first feeling you always had, didn't matter how tired you were, was always this flutter in the guts, like to say, I've done it. The other way I could see Sam was right was obviously if you want something, you ain't going to get it for nothing, not unless you inherit it, and you can't inherit running, and there was a hell of a lot to want in athletics--breaking records, running for Britain, traveling abroad, and maybe one day, please God, an Olympic medal. Because records, they were here today and gone tomorrow, but an Olympic gold medal they could never take away from you


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