July 22, 1996
CRASH AND BURN!
LINDA JACKSON'S OLYMPIC DREAM ENDS WITH HEARTBREAK
By CHRIS STEVENSON
Sun Sports
ATLANTA -- The darkest two minutes of Linda Jackson's sporting life began with her standing over a twisted bike on a tree-lined street in suburban Buckhead, handle bars askew, chain hanging limply, blood pouring from her smashed forearm, the pack of competitors in the Olympic road race whirring off into the distance.
The crash had been a bad one, coming in the middle of the pack, and she had no where to go. No where to go but into the confused pile of arms and wheels and legs and metal.
Jackson went over the handlebars, her arms instinctively extending to protect her, her right elbow crashing into a sign post.
She remounted the wonky bike and tried to rejoin the pursuit, but just a few feet further up the street, somewhere on Tuxedo Rd., her Olympic dream of a medal in the road race died a slow, excruciating death.
So many things flashed through her mind as she fought to command her mangled arm to shift gears, a fight she could not win.
Slowly, mercilessly, the realization she could not go on shouldered aside her will to keep hammering away at the pedals.
The realization took hold that her one and only shot at the Olympic road race would end not with a trip to the podium but to the hospital.
Her battle now was not with her arm that was shredded and raw and unresponsive, tendons and muscles cut, but with her heart, which was breaking.
"I just kept thinking, `I've got to catch on, I've got to catch on, but I couldn't ... Oh my God,'" she thought. "I gave up so much for this ... for seven minutes of racing? I just tried not to break down."
As they erected the podium for winner Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, silver medalist Imelda Chiappa and bronze winner Clara Hughes of Canada a few yards away, Jackson stood there by the start/finish line, her arm in a blue sling, a sticker on the sling, stuck there by hospital staff, a sticker which said "Hero."
She lowered her head and the tears that she would not allow to fall on Tuxedo Rd., began to trickle down her cheeks.
She fought them back, answered a few more questions, continued heading for the press centre.
Just inside the door waited her father, Garth, and when Jackson saw him, she rushed to his arms. He embraced her and she buried her face in his shoulder, and the tears she would not allow to fall during those terrible two minutes on Tuxedo Rd. began to flow.
He held her, as he probably has hundreds of times in her life, his eyes closed, his hand patting her back softly.
"I only got here with three laps to go," he said. "I was looking for you ..."
She told him the arm was not broken and that she held out the hope she could still compete in the time trials in two weeks. Then she managed a smile.
"Let's have dinner," she said. "With some good wine."
A few minutes later, Garth stood outside the press centre, getting ready to return to his wife, Irene. She couldn't make it to the race. She had a knee transplant recently and the trip to Atlanta had tired her. She woke up yesterday morning feeling ill -- "Probably some nerves, too" said Garth -- and he left her in bed at the home of the family with which they are staying.
Like all fathers, the hurt that showed in Garth's eyes was greater than if it had been his own misfortune. If he could at that moment, he surely would have given anything to spare his daughter the pain that pounded in her arm and squeezed her heart.
He, more than anyone, knew the sacrifices she had made, giving up her immensely successful career at 31, the big salary, the jet-set lifestyle, the comfort and security, to chase this dream which now lay broken on a leafy street
"I had such high hopes," he said. "But I'm mostly disappointed for her. At 37, she's just like Longo. They don't have many more years left. Too bad she didn't start earlier."
Downstairs, in a remarkable display of grace and class, Linda Jackson sat there with her arm in that sling and her heart on the floor and sang the praises of Longo-Ciprelli and Hughes, who had won Canada's first medal of the Games. Your eyes couldn't help but be drawn to that sticker on the sling and the one word.
In those terrible two minutes on Tuxedo Rd., Linda Jackson battled hard, probably harder than she ever has in her life, not to let her dream die.
It slipped away yesterday, but she might get another chance if therapy and nature can make her well enough to ride in that time trial.
Hope that she will.
She deserves to take home a memory of these Games other than those terrible two minutes on Tuxedo Rd.
SECOND CHANCE?:
Jackson is hoping she can finish her first and probably only Olympics on a positive note with an appearance in the time trials.
It's going to take some intense therapy to get her arm in shape.
"Swelling will be an issue," said Jackson. "It hampers it. I told Sandy (Rennie, a Canadian team therapist) we need to get it going."
"I told her to keep her spirits up," said Jackson's father, Garth. "Hopefully she can get in that time trial. If not, she's done her best. Maybe they can tape her up. At least in that race, she'll be on her own. Maybe she can do it."
