Imagine the emotions exploding through Kenta Bell this Friday morning.
Excitement. Relief. And no doubt, frustration.
As he told me on the steamy July night he qualified for the Olympic Games, "Doug, I hate to lose."
That was after Bell was suddenly knocked from first to third in the final round of a stunning and spectacular triple jump competition July 17 at the USA Olympic Trials in Sacramento.
A career goal had been realized - this skinny kid from Kilgore, Texas, and Northwestern was heading to the Olympic Games as a member of Team USA.
But he wasn't able to fully enjoy or appreciate it in the aftermath. Lost in the excitement of Melvin Lister's last-jump personal record 58-4, and the 57-10 1/4 personal record by LSU great and 2000 Olympian Walter Davis, was Bell's impressive reply. Knowing he was already qualified for Athens, with a 57-8 1/4 leap on the third of six jumps, Bell didn't pass on the last round. He tried to win.
His final-round 57-8 jump, he told me that night, "could have been well over 58 feet" except for a technical mistake.
He finished third. That stung him. But really, he didn't lose. That would have been finishing fourth and failing to make the Olympic team.
Now, at the close of the first day of track and field competition in Athens, Bell finds himself in a similar situation. Again, although it wasn't what he wanted, he has done what he needed. Bottom line, in Sacramento, it was all about being one of the top three qualifiers and punching a ticket to Athens. And in the qualifying round of the men's triple jump Friday morning in the magnificent 72,000-seat Olympic Stadium, Bell again lost, but really won.
In Sacramento, and Friday morning in Athens, for Kenta Bell it was all about "survive and advance."
No matter than he was the 10th-best qualifier Friday in the greatest triple jump qualifying competition in Olympic history. It only matters that he's one of the Dynamic Dozen. He will be back on the track Sunday night, at 8:10 Athens time, one of 12 men from around the globe competing for an Olympic medal and athletic immortality.
What a magnificent achievement. For a virtually unrecruited athlete who had a best of 47 feet in the triple jump when he arrived in Natchitoches as a freshman at Northwestern in 1996, it's absolutely amazing.
Nobody other than his high school coach and NSU's incomparable Leon Johnson saw the potential for Bell to develop into a quality competitor on the college level in the triple jump. It was unthinkable that he might be an Olympic-caliber performer.
Fast forward to the spring of 2001. After a wonderful career as an athlete at Northwestern, and with his NSU degree, there was Bell, coaxing miles out of a car better described as a relic, living off Ramen noodles, tuna and chicken, trying to sustain his dream of becoming a world-class athlete.
He had qualified to represent America at the World University Games in Beijing. Competing overseas was no longer a novelty for him. Neither was a lifestyle one notch ahead of poverty level.
"I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this," he told me before leaving for China. "I've got a college degree. My life is on hold. I've got student loans and bills up to my ears and I don't like living like this. If I don't hit a big jump soon, I'm going to have to hang it up and join the real world."
Luck, it's said, is when preparation meets opportunity. The unmentioned factor in that equation is often desperation.
Kenta broke through in Beijing. He won the gold medal, soaring to a personal best 56-6 that caught the attention of USA Track and Field, the nation's governing body for the sport, and the U.S. Olympic Committee. It was the best jump that year by an American. It was the "big jump" Bell needed. He's spent the last two-plus years living and training at a U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., aiming for Olympic glory in Athens.
At 27, Bell probably has another Olympiad in his bones. But his calendar extends only through Sunday night. For the last three years, he's dreamed of stepping on the runway, under the stars, in front of the world, taking his shot at an Olympic gold medal, and winning.
Those golden dreams are now almost complete. Experts at Sports Illustrated and USA Today earlier this month predicted Bell would win the silver medal. He has openly said he considers himself the favorite for the gold, because he is (and it's not bragging, just fact, as Dizzy Dean used to tell us) the most consistent triple jumper in the world this year, with eight jumps over 57 feet.
Last month, on the cell phone from Sacramento, he told me he thought it would take at least a 58-footer, and probably a personal record from him, to win in Athens. He went 58-4, albeit a wind-aided mark, in May in a meet in El Paso. His "legal," non-wind-aided competitive best is 57-10 1/4. He was confident he had what it would take in Athens.
I can't imagine he's any less confident today. And now, he's a little bit angry, I'm sure, after not enjoying the easy road in Friday's qualifying.
Look out, world. His track record tells us, when he's under pressure, our man Kenta can answer the Bell.
