Jane Saville

By Kate Noble

If both your feet are off the ground, you're running. That was something Australian race walker Jane Saville forgot as she neared the end of her 20-km race. In first place and only 200 m from a triumphal finish inside Stadium Australia, Saville was dramatically, almost cruelly--but correctly--disqualified from the race for running.

"I could hear the crowd," she said afterward, "and I could see them at the top of the grandstand...and I was thinking, 'Wow, this is going to be the most awesome experience of my life.'" At that moment a judge stepped out in front of her and raised a red card. Saville's race was ended. "No, no, no, not me!" she screamed. Crying uncontrollably, she fled.

A walker infringing the rules is cautioned twice, then shown the red card. China's Liu Hongyu, the 1999 world champion, and Italy's Elisabetta Perrone, who won silver in the 10-km at Atlanta, were also red-carded. When Saville too was tossed, China's Wang Liping was left to take the gold.

Saville's coach, Ron Weigel, behaved as theatrically as his protege. He wept, threw a chair and even blamed politics for Saville's elimination. When she had calmed down, Saville realized that race walking--already subject to criticism as an Olympic sport--had not been well served by her distress. "I love this sport," she avowed. "If nothing else, it makes you the toughest person around."

--By Kate Noble