Fight for a Fraction

TRACK & FIELD

What is a tenth of a second? It is one-eighth of a heartbeat, 1/30th of a sigh, 1/21,000,000,000th of a lifetime. It is, literally, the blinking of an eye -- an in significant instant to people who measure their lives in minutes or months or 40-hour weeks. But not to Robert Lee Hayes, 21, a husky sprinter from Florida A. & M. University. Hayes is the world's fastest human, a title he holds by virtue of the fragile fact that he can run 60 yds. or 100 yds. a tenth of a second faster than anybody else who ever lived.

Pigeon-Toed & Knock-Kneed. Bob Hayes's mother remembers that he was a late walker and the slowest dishwasher in the family. Jake Gaither, Florida A. & M.'s football coach, recalls the first time he saw Hayes run: "I had to smile a little. He was pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, and he sort of wobbled. 'Jake,' they told me, 'you've got to teach that boy how to run.' But then I saw how he left those defensive backs behind, and I said, 'Let him alone. He'll do all right by himself.' " That was four years ago, and Bob Hayes still does not act like a man in much of a hurry. He yawns a lot, and he never stands when he can sit. He is taking five years to finish college. He has trouble keeping his weight down, and he still runs pigeon-toed--so much so that he is forever stabbing himself ("usually in the big toe") with his own half-inch-long track spikes.

But nobody makes fun of Bob Hayes any more. Outdoors in St. Louis last June, he ran the 100-yd. dash in 9.1 sec., clipping .1 sec. off Frank Budd's world record. Indoors in New York three weeks ago, he sprinted 60 yds. in 5.9 sec. for still another world record. In a year and a half, outdoors or indoors, Hayes has lost only two races.

Rabbits & Guns. By trade, Hayes is a halfback, not a sprinter. He earns his keep at A. & M. (room, board, tuition and free laundry) toiling autumns for Gaither's padded legions; he scored eleven touchdowns, leading the team to an 8-2 season last year, and he might already belong to some pro football club if 1964 were not an Olympic year (he has been drafted by both the Denver Broncos and the Dallas Cowboys). Even in track skivvies, Hayes still runs as though he had a football tucked under his arm--head bobbing, shoulders rolling, elbows flailing. Unlike such "rabbits" as Germany's Olympic Champion Armin Hary, Hayes has never learned to get the jump on his field by anticipating the starter's gun. He frequently is the last man off the blocks, or close to it.

But once he is in motion, Hayes accelerates like a dragster. Within 40 yds., he is moving at top speed. Then, as if he had flipped a switch, he goes into overdrive--a kind of higher-than-high gear, in which he actually seems to be flying along about 3 in. off the ground.

The track meets are moving outdoors now. This week Hayes will run his first 100 of the spring at the Florida A.A.U. Invitational at Miami. Hayes's Coach Dick Hill has his star practicing starts every afternoon, blasting out of the blocks time after time, fighting to pare a tiny fraction of a second off the time it takes him to get in motion. "It's a matter of reflexes," says Hill. "It takes a runner 1/100th to one-tenth of a second to react to the starter's gun. The idea is to get Bob to react as instantly as possible." And one day Hayes will get a perfect start--the gun and the first driving step in the same tick of time. Both Hayes and Hill are certain of it. "When that day comes," says Hayes, "I'll do 9 flat." "He'll do 8.9," says Coach Hill. "And he'll do it this year."

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