Phillips' old injury spurs great leap forward

By Dick Patrick

USA TODAY

ATHENS, Greece - Dwight Phillips' dream to run the 400 meters at the Olympics was crushed - not by the accident leaving him with two broken legs that doctors feared might incapacitate him, but by a late career switch.

``I always saw myself running the 400 and anchoring the 4x400 relay to the gold medal,'' Phillips says.

He'll have to settle for being a long jumper. Phillips, 26, is the favorite for gold Thursday. He led qualifying Tuesday with a jump of 27-3 1/4.

After winning world titles indoors and outdoors last year, Phillips won the U.S. trials in July and on Aug. 2 jumped a personal best 28-2 3/4, giving him the top five jumps of 2004.

``I've reached a new echelon,'' says Phillips, who was eighth at the 2000 Games and in 2003 was ranked No. 1 in the world. ``I'm going in very confident and very excited about the possibility of winning the gold medal.''Twelve years ago, Phillips' parents, who are attending the Games, were worried their son, then 14, might not walk again. Phillips was playing football in the street in Tucker, Ga., when he was backpedaling and struck by a motorcycle driven by one of his older brother's friends.

``I heard something loud roaring from behind,'' he says. ``It didn't register what it was. I tried to stand up, but my legs felt like they were twisting. I collapsed on the ground.''

Both legs were broken below the knee, with the right leg getting the worse of it. ``They didn't think I'd be able to walk or function with that leg,'' Phillips says. ``For some reason, that never bothered me. I knew I would rebound.

``Whenever they have those life stories of people who have had adversity and bounced back, I know what it feels like.''

Time has obscured Phillips' memory of the pain and the rehab. He estimates that he was in casts for four months and needed two years to completely recover.

``It changed me a lot,'' Phillips says. ``I don't take anything for granted. You see people walking around crippled all the time. It made me grateful to have everything on my body. I'm able to walk.

``I think it was a positive. I learned to fight through adversity. That gave me a lot of fight. I know how to fight through, even in the hardest moments.''

The 5-11, 180-pound Phillips played basketball and ran track at Tucker, where he long jumped 23 feet, triple jumped 50-10 and high jumped 6-10, attracting the attention of Kentucky assistant coach Darryl Anderson. As a senior in 1996, Phillips long jumped, in between basketball games, at the Georgia indoor championships, attended by Greg Kraft, then the South Carolina coach.

``It's funny,'' Kraft says. ``It was just a flash. I remember seeing him jump, and it was like, `Wow.' I went to Darryl Anderson and said, `The kid from Tucker is good.' Darryl told me, `He's coming to Kentucky with me.' I said, `You've got a good one.' ``

Still thinking of himself as quarter-miler, Phillips went to Kentucky, staying two years before transferring to Arizona State, where Kraft had become head coach and hired Anderson as an assistant.

In 1998 Kraft thought about turning Phillips into a long jumper, explaining there was a glut of 400 runners in the United States but a void in the long jump.

``I felt he was a jack of all trades and master of none,'' Kraft says. ``I tried to specify his training, get him to focus and teach him to be an efficient long jumper.

``A lot of people think of it as a natural event. But it's not natural to come down the runway with 10.1 (100-meter) speed, hit an 8-inch board and project yourself over 27 or 28 feet. There are a lot more guys running 10.1 than there are long jumping 27 feet.''

Though resistant at first, Phillips became a convert when he won his second meet and jumped over 25 feet. He now appears ready to join a list of U.S. long jump gold medalists that includes Jesse Owens, Ralph Boston, Bob Beamon and Carl Lewis.

``I have a passion for it now,'' Phillips says. ``I like the fact you can outdo your competitors. He may put a limit out there, then I break his limit. In essence there are no limits in the long jump.''

Phillips expects to exceed his 28-2 3/4 best soon. When he saw the jump on television earlier this month, he wasn't pleased with his technique: ``I could have held my landing a little longer. I rushed my movements in the air because I wasn't used to jumping that far. You've got to get used to taking your body to a different level.''

During the Olympics, in contrast to most jumpers, Phillips will be competing without a coach present, as he did in winning last year's world indoor and outdoor titles. Unlike in Sydney in 2000, Kraft won't be in the stands, communicating by voice or signals. Kraft decided not to attend the games because of his duties at Arizona State and because he thought increased security would make it too difficult to communicate with Phillips during competition.

``He taught me everything. He prepared me,'' Phillips says of being self-reliant.

Phillips' mental abilities are an asset, according to teammate and triple jumper Kenta Bell. ``Dwight is mentally one of the toughest people I know,'' Bell says. ``He can overcome anything. If you take all the big meets he won last year, it probably came by a total of six centimeters. He can come back and win by a centimeter at any time. That's a gift.''

Now that he has a new event, Phillips has a new vision: ``My dream is breaking world records and being Olympic champion to set a legacy and to follow in the footsteps of the great jumpers before me.''