Brazilian middle-distance legend talks about why finding love on the eve of the Los Angeles Games helped him win gold 40 years ago
It has been 40 years since Joaquim Cruz beat Seb Coe to the Olympic 800m title in Los Angeles. He still looks bronzed and supremely fit, but he has flecks of grey in his hair these days and his battle-weary body rejects running. Aged 61, he prefers to walk.
“I find enjoyment and all the balance I need in the morning with a three-mile walk,” he smiles. “I used to run but it was too aggressive and hurting me a lot. I sometimes shuffle or take the bike if I want to sweat. But I don’t miss running.”
In the history of middle-distance running there are few sights quite as majestic as Cruz in full flight during the summer of 1984. The tall Brazilian with the long raking stride dominated the 800m at the LA Games, surging away from Coe in the final to clock an Olympic record of 1:43.00.
Three weeks later in Cologne he ran 1:41.77 to miss Coe’s world record by four hundredths of a second. Altogether he ran inside 1:43 half a dozen times as he lit up the tracks of Europe. Despite injuries, he came close to successfully defending his title in Seoul four years later, too, finishing runner-up to Paul Ereng of Kenya.
For the past 19 years Cruz has worked at US Paralympics and says he rarely looks back to the 1980s. But his memory of those years is still sharp and he tells a great story from the 1981 World Cup in Rome where he finished a distant sixth aged just 18 in a race dominated by Coe.
“A couple of days before the competition I saw Seb training and I was fascinated by how he was able to move,” Cruz remembers. “My race in Rome was terrible. I choked. But I was putting my sweats back on and he was kind enough to stop by and shake my hand and say a few words. I don’t think he realised that I didn’t speak any English at the time, though!
“Later I promised myself that I wouldn’t feel that way again in a race. So in 1984 we were waiting for the medal ceremony in LA and I asked him ‘hey, what did you tell me in Rome when you shook my hand?’ He said, ‘I told you that you were going to be a great champion’. I was lost for words.”
Joaquim Cruz (Mark Shearman)
Coe’s prediction came true as Cruz claimed the Olympic crown three years after finishing well behind the Briton in Rome. It was a rocky road to Los Angeles, however.
At the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, for example, Cruz and Peter Elliott battled each other to take the lead and, after running each other into the ground with a searing pace, they were both over taken by Willi Wülbeck of West Germany in the closing stages, with Cruz finishing third and Elliott fourth.
“It was the best experience of my career!” Cruz surprisingly says. “What happened in Helsinki had to happen in order for me to win in LA.
“In Helsinki I had one plan only – to take the lead and run from the front. I couldn’t sleep because I was playing the tactic through in my mind all night. My coach told me to go and execute it, but Peter Elliott messed me up!
“After 300m he took the lead. I thought ‘what is this guy doing?’ For a whole lap I was fighting him for the lead, which was not part of my plan. I regained the lead with 100m to go but lost the race. And there was the lesson to learn.”
Peter Elliott leads Joaqum Cruz (Mark Shearman)
Cruz returned to Oregon – where he had moved to study after growing up in humble conditions as the youngest of six children in Taguatinga, Brazil – and he vowed to train more diligently than ever ahead of the 1984 Olympics. He also fell in love and feels it was the missing ingredient that helped him reach top form at the Games.
“LA was the peak of everything,” he explains. “In 1983-84 I was experiencing a very special phase of my life – a balanced phase. I was in an ‘equilibrium’, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
“Emotionally it was when I met my future wife (Mary) and I was hit by a ‘love lightning’ and this helped everything I did. It was the first time I fell in love with my training and everything I was doing.
“Training became much easier and I was feeling things that I didn’t think a human can feel, unless that person is in love. I was using that passion in my preparation and I experienced a supreme feeling during the whole build-up to the Games. When you are passionate about what you do, you can accomplish crazy things.
Joaqum Cruz (Mark Shearman)
“When I went in the stadium to run the final, my spirit was not there anymore,” he continues. “It was miles from California and all the way in Oregon where my future wife was watching me. I was watching myself through her eyes seeing me delivering what I delivered.
“I felt like a warrior. I was on my journey and LA was the biggest battle of my life and the biggest dragon to kill. I was doing it for myself, my coach, my country and my loved one.
“In the story of Beowulf he was going off to kill the dragon and knew he would return to his loved one. And I felt like that.”
The Olympic final was stacked with not only Coe but Americans Earl Jones and Johnny Gray, defending champion Steve Ovett, future world champion Billy Konchellah plus Edwin Koech of Kenya and Donato Sabia of Italy, who sadly died three years ago from Covid aged just 56.
Did Cruz feel invincible? “Yes!” he says without hesitation. “There were two athletes who were my role models – Alberto Juantorena and Sebastian Coe. I thought to beat Sebastian Coe you had to have speed and be able to move from A to B really quick.
Joaqum Cruz (Mark Shearman)
“I knew he’d made a mistake in 1980 and so I was preparing to see what he would do in 1984 because I knew he wouldn’t make that mistake again. I wasn’t worried about the pace as I felt unbeatable. I had supreme fitness. If the pace was fast, I could handle it and if it was slow, I had the speed. But it was right in the middle and I was able to handle the race – and Coe – at the same time.”
Could he have run faster that day? “I think so. With 300m to go I would usually start to pick up the pace and I practised this a lot in training. But in this final in LA I had to tell myself ‘don’t go yet… don’t go yet’. So I held back until about 100m to go. Then I felt the goose bumps. The lanes melted away and I could only see my lane. I could have run another 200 metres maybe after that.”
Cruz achieved these feats despite initially being a reluctant runner who played basketball during his youth and didn’t particularly enjoy athletics. There were also reports at the time that he had one leg longer than the other and had to wear orthotics to try to solve the problem. “It’s not a story, it’s a reality!” he says, explaining that his right femur is two centimetres shorter than his left.
Joaquim Cruz (Mark Shearman)
Did it cause an unusual amount of injuries? “It was a probably combination of things,” he says. “The leg length discrepancy and also my intensity. I did not like to move slowly and Luiz (De Oliveira) was a very intensive coach. I was really shy growing up but the sport was a way to express myself and I used it to show off.”
The men’s 800m is enjoying a good year in 2024 with three men so far clocking 1:41 and a further eight running 1:42. Cruz doesn’t follow the current scene particularly closely but he is aware of the spate of fast times and says: “It should have happened a long time ago. I thought in 2012 when Rudisha ran a world record, it would inspire a new generation to realise ‘wow, this is what’s possible’. But it faded and didn’t happen.
“Yet now, with so many athletes running under 1:43 this year, it has become the expectation. If you’re not embracing this possibility, you should maybe go to find something else to do.”
What could Cruz run for 800m these days? “I would not even try!” he laughs.
What could he have run in 1984 if he had access to super shoes, better tracks and improved training knowledge? “I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I was blessed with so many great runners in my time like Sebastian Coe, James Robinson, Peter Elliott, Steve Ovett, Said Aouita and my Brazilians team-mates (José Luiz Barbosa and Agberto Guimarães). I had enough stimulation in that sense.
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“As for the shoes, you need the personal expectation, drive and courage to take your body to the next level in order to make those shoes look good and the track feel fast! Without those things you’re not going to run fast.”
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