Jonny Wootton (onrunning.com)
25 April 2001 - I suppose it
shouldn’t be a surprise, living in California, that 1984 Olympic 800m champion
Joaquim Cruz is a personal trainer and a sprints coach at UCSD - University College of San
Diego.
But what is immediately apparent is his relaxed and philosophical approach to life and this, rather than his dominance on the track, is now the way I will always remember him.
Being a coach I always thought, especially if you reached the dizzy heights of your sport, that the ultimate goal would be to take your athletes to the very top of the sport - to be the best.
This is not the case with Cruz, who was raised in Taguatinga, Brazil - a town that was without gas, electricity and proper sanitation - for he proclaims to be interested in ‘the long process.’
He goes on to tell me a story about one of his athletes who was overcome with nerves before a competition. The athlete in question felt under extreme pressure, albeit from himself only, to perform. Joaquim finally sat his pupil down and explained once again he should not put too much pressure on himself and that he was not interested in the finished product but more about the well-being and happiness of his team.
I don’t know many coaches who are truly not concerned with what their athletes achieve but it is probably this modern stress-free philosophy as to why the gentle giant is such at ease with himself and his life.
Cruz admits to ‘working his butt off’ as an athlete but only took up the sport under heavy persuasion from his basketball coach - who transformed himself into his running coach as well to guide him throughout his career.
At just 14 years of age he ran 48 seconds for 400m and 4.02 minutes for 1500m. This was with minimal training, mainly basketball workouts, which included bounding, and a 12-minute run.
Despite showing his obvious talent, Cruz still had no interest in pursuing a career on the track.
He explains: “My coach had a problem convincing me to be a runner - I didn’t have the right personality.”
It wasn’t long, however, that he had a change in his mindset.
He stopped hanging around with his friends, kicking a football about in the local streets and decided he wanted something better.
Although basketball was his first love and he even had a US college scholarship waved in front of him, he finally realised that running was where his talent lay and made a conscious effort to make a real go of it.
He ran 1:44.3 at just 18 - the same year he, his coach and his coach’s family moved to the United States to maximise his prospects. He has lived in the land of opportunity since that day and is now happily married with two young sons - Kevin (seven) and Paolo, aged four.
He continued his progression and began to catch the eyes of athletics aficionados on the world stage, but it was not until he swept aside world record holder Sebastian Coe to claim Olympic gold in Los Angeles that he truly proclaimed himself one of the best ever over two laps.
He had met Coe on and off the track before and remembers the first time he faced him in the World Cup in 1981 - when the double Olympic 1500m champion was at his peak.
“I remember racing him in ‘81 and I didn’t see him after the gun had gone.
“I went up to congratulate him afterwards and he said something to me in English but I didn’t speak English at the time so I didn’t understand what he said. The next time I spoke to him was in Los Angeles after I had won the gold medal and I asked him what he had said to me that day. I was surprised when he said he told me I would be a great champion.”
Coe, who was runner-up over 800m in 1980 as well, had a profound effect on Cruz. He had studied Coe’s warm-up for a race early in his career and was stunned, but impressed, by what he saw.
He explains: “I couldn’t believe how fast he ran in his warm-up - it was almost like he was racing. But do you know what? From that day I did the same warm-up as him and it worked.”
Despite his obvious admiration for Coe, when asked who was the toughest opponent he ever faced he named another Englishman.
He says: “Peter Elliott was definitely the toughest opponent I ever faced. You had to be mentally and physically prepared when you raced him.
“I lost the World Championships in ‘83 because of Peter trying to regain my lead on the back straight. By the time I had got past him I was too tired to do anything and Willi Wulbeck went on to win the race. Elliott was a very tough runner.”
Cruz suffered injury in the run-up to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul and did not look quite the runner he had four years earlier, despite finishing second to the virtually unknown Paul Ereng, of Kenya.
He would never reach the same heights again after the Games in South Korea following a succession of injuries, but this is something that does not bother him in the slightest for he did his best when he had the chance.
Most athletes would find it agonising to come so close to such an incredible world record that managed to last more than 16 years, but that is what Cruz did in 1984 in Cologne.
Coe ran 1:41.73 in 1981 just four one-hundredths of a second faster than what Cruz achieved in 1984.
When asked about this, his answer sums up the man and his philosophy on life. “I wasn’t bothered about the world record because I did my best on that day,” a statement that most athletes in this day and age would struggle to make.
This article is reproduced by kind permission of the author, an editor of onrunning.com