Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #193: Dan O'Brien-Gold Medalist, broadcaster, consultant, and more

Transcript

#193: Dan O'Brien-Gold Medalist, broadcaster, consultant, and more · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:10
  Track and field coach, the ones that point
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  people most every season. He's the voice of reason.
• 0:27
  Speaking, the growth gotta prep for you carry the load.
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  Talk to the stove. For those of us, stay on the go
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  pop, the handle, staying in the zone.
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  What you packing for the role is more than one way to go taking
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  those tests. And you told it ain't practice
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  it before it became clear. You can't happen to you.
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  Listen with both ears, can't Mentor, without a mentor, kids
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  of experience, you can reinvent those kids.
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  Every plans got to stand and deliver in the price sacrifice,
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  can you give up Hugh its choice and to fight not to win or lose?
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  It's not a boy, but if I see, y'all can make more movies, not
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  about how to All about why you don't know what you're you know
• 1:02
  who you are inside. Six, many ways to die.
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  She's not absorb. Your faults Finish Line.
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  The work ain't done. So we learn from the experts to.
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  Y'all got to put in the legwork Gil athletic shoes Network.
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  It's all about Connections put together for the profession to
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  every track coach could be blessed.
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  Alright, welcome back to the Gila FedEx connections, podcast,
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  the podcast that goes around the world, getting just amazing
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  people and coaches in the track and field community, and just
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  uplifting and honoring what they do.
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  And we're just so blessed that you would join us here.
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  Again, once again, we're doing this weekly season for can't
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  believe we're doing season for today is a fun one, this will be
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  the first guest. We've had that I had an action
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  figure of almost like growing up.
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  So I want to I don't want to age him that bad, but as a high
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  schooler, I definitely had this Amazing.
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  Little doll of this amazing person.
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  Here, help me, welcome the wise, the wonderful Mr. Dan O'Brien,
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  Dan, how are you, sir? I'm good, Mike, thank you.
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  I appreciate the wise. Wow.
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  Okay, yeah, yeah. Well we'll find out, you know, I
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  give everybody the benefit of the doubt.
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  I am impressed. You know, if I had an action
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  figure of myself, it would be front and center.
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  Everywhere I go, I don't see it anywhere here in the office.
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  They're hard to find, you know what?
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  I don't know if you still have it but I'll send you one still
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  in the box. It's really funny when I get
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  those as well because they came out after the 96 Olympics and,
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  you know, I'll go to the milrose games and people will bring them
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  there and have me have me sign them and they're still in really
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  great shape. I've, you know, I had one,
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  Michael Johnson had one ours look very similar to one another
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  so that the details, not that details, not great, but no, it's
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  fun to say. Hey man, I got an action figure
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  out of it. Yeah, I unfortunately Moved a
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  lot in my career until I got here to Gill.
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  And so unfortunately have lost it.
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  You talk about the technology. Technology is got a little bit
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  better. I bet they look better today and
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  we need to do more. I love that they did that.
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  I also had who was the old-school hurdler that they
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  had. I mean old, I mean yeah, gosh, I
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  still remember because the way who's that?
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  Edwin, Moses made no no like oh, check it member.
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  Who was like like in the 30s 40s.
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  Kind of guy, I can't. Okay, yeah, that's what my
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  memory tells. Someone's gonna someone's
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  yelling at us, right? Now, listening and saying yeah,
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  it's so and so, but yeah. Michael Johnson.
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  You. It was it was amazing.
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  We need to do more stuff like that for track and field more
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  baseball card type stuff. More action figures.
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  We need more of that bobble heads.
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  There we go. Well, that would, that would
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  okay. Well, I won't even comment that
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  I'm like I said, like I said well Dan thanks for being on the
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  show. I thought, you know, I love
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  bringing different perspectives to our audience, we have a Cadre
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  and amazing back library of awesome.
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  Awesome, people who choose to be track coaches.
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  And while you have coached some in your career, you have a very
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  unique aspect with your athletic side.
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  We're not going to get too much into your athletic career
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  because it's been well, recorded in.
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  Boy, if you are listening on, you don't know, Dan's athletic
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  career. First of all, are you in track?
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  And we come on now, but just Google his name and just
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  fantastic, fantastic career. But something that helped guide
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  you to this amazing athletic career that you had were really
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  some phenomenal coaches. I thought it'd be interesting to
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  take some time and talk about about some of the coaches that
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  have poured into your life. We typically talk to the coach
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  I'm kind of flipping around. Let's hear from the the athlete
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  side of things. So maybe we start Dan, you know,
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  decathlon's. Not typically something we do in
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  high school, you know, if you were a shot putter all the way
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  it would have been like, oh, who introduced you to the shop?
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  Put in high school, I'm assuming you were not introduced to the
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  decathlon in high school. You correct me.
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  How did we get going into the actual decathlon?
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  Well, that's a great question. And I love the fact that this
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  show concentrates on coaches, and if it weren't for some
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  fantastic coaches, you know, I not only would have not gotten
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  into the decathlon. I wouldn't have been able to win
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  World Championships, and Olympic gold medals.
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  But, you know, I ran track and field in in junior high.
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  Okay. So, I have an interesting story
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  and, you know, I started in sports Little League baseball
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  and then I got introduced a basketball in the fifth grade,
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  but the first race I ever ran, I won and it was a mild.
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  Run fun, run for kids at a homecoming, football game.
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  The whole day was filled with activities, you know, the 10 and
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  11 year olds lined up, boom, the gun went off.
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  Next thing I know me, and another kid are out front and I
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  outsprint him to the line and then they give you a big ribbon
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  at the halftime of the football game.
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  And I thought this is glorious. You know, I'm good at something
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  I because I was very average at baseball, but as I got through
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  Junior High, I joined the track team just to be with my friends,
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  you know? And they put me with the they
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  put me with a long distance. The runners and because that's
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  just where my buddies words, like what you want to do?
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  I'm an over on the mile, the you know, run the 2-mile with these
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  guys and one day again it was agonizing, I absolutely hated.
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  Sure, that was coming in from a long run sprinted to the line
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  and the coach said, you know, I don't you want your room with
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  the quarter milers and I start again with the sprinters and I
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  never looked back but when I got into High School, I had I was
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  really following a lot of great. A lot of great High School
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  sprinters and track and field kids at Henley High School in
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  southern Oregon. All right, I grew up in Klamath,
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  Falls Oregon and my mom had a rule that if I got anything
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  lower than a see you in a class. I couldn't participate in the
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  sport of that quarter. All right?
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  We're on the quarter system and I remember over the over the
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  over the over the winter quarter, I got a D and social
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  studies Eddie's you know, which was just unacceptable my dad.
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  Be really could have cared less. If I you know, if I stayed out
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  of track he wanted me to you know, displace ports but my mom
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  was held me from track. And so that ninth grade year, I
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  had to walk past the track every day to get home or ride my bike
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  and it just hurt me. See all my buddies out there and
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  all my friends and and I just thought, oh this is just, you
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  know, I never wanted to do that again.
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  But I had a pottery teacher by the name of Larry Hunt Big tall
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  guy like 669, he loved track and field and so Larry you know,
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  would I would see him you know during during the pottery hour
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  and he said look I want you to bring a social studies homework
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  in I'ma help you get your grade up.
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  Let's make sure that you're taking notes correctly and all
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  this stuff and so he really went out of his way to help me.
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  And after the, after the school year was done, he came out to my
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  house and he sat with my mother and he said, mrs.
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  O'Brien, you know, Dan's got his grade up, I would love for him
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  to participate. Participate in a summer
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  decathlon and I didn't know what the decathlon even was, you
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  know. Wow, yeah.
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  Larry went out of his way. Sat with my mother and said,
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  look, I'd like to train him for three weeks, four weeks, and do
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  this Southern Oregon State decathlon.
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  And at that point, I didn't care what the track and field event
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  was I was just going to get to participate because I hadn't
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  played Sports in about 10 weeks. So Larry and I each day we would
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  be on the track and he would pick two events.
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  We pick two events and we would practice and compete against
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  each other. Larry was still fairly fairly
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  young guy at the time and he could do quite a few things.
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  So I would pick the events that I knew I could beat him in and
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  he would pick the events that he knew I needed to work on them.
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  All right? So it was kind of this battle,
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  you know, I want to I want to beat him in some events and he's
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  trying to make me better in a lot of events.
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  But what was cool about the decathlon as I was trying things
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  for the Very first time I long jump by pole, vaulted a little
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  bit, my freshman year or excuse me, my 8th grade year.
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  And then as I got into high school, as I got into high
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  school, you know, I was, I didn't really know what the
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  events I was going to be in, but the first time I ever heard was
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  in preparation for the decathlon, and they put the
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  hurdles up. And the coach said, you know,
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  here's here's how you do it. And I came out of the blocks,
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  and I three-step the very first time, and the coach looked at me
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  and I said it, Right. He was just like, oh yeah,
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  that's it, that's correct. And so right away, I was showing
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  that I had some, you know, that I had I had some, you know,
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  skills to do the event. I was the kind of kid that would
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  go down to the shop, put or The discus, throw the javelin and
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  just pick it up and say, hey let me try it, you know, let me just
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  throw this thing around, let me see if I can, I can throw it and
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  so everything kind of just fell into place and fit just a little
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  bit. There was there was a lot of
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  work but but I was I was Showing I was showing just natural
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  ability was Larry. One of the track coaches.
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  Yes, Larry was okay. I was about to say, why in the
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  world did he? I'm just wasn't quite amazing
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  and I love this, you know, we talk a lot about a lot of times
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  about, you know, these small Forks in the road, when we were
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  younger that we really don't think about, you know, getting a
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  D in history. Maybe he would have gone into
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  the decathlon. But you just, you know, you'd
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  been a sprinter and did track that year.
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  Here's Larry. Who could Larry Hunt, who could
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  have easily said, hey, you know, you need to study And we'll see
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  you next year, but took this interest in the love, the
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  interest in the decathlon. And I mean, what an influence
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  Larry Hunt had on track and field, not just being O'Brien,
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  by the way, track and feel the affected all of track and field
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  because of this. Well, what's interesting is he
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  just he was like, West Coast Franks are now ski.
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  He mugged the stats, he followed everything.
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  But as we got training, I realized he loved the decathlon.
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  Alright? And so, the first one of the
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  first stories he told me and I didn't know what the decathlon
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  was but he described it as a as you know, this was the, this was
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  the event that Bruce Jenner made famous, but he was keeping score
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  at the 1976 Olympic trials and he said, he was ahead of the
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  scores. So when Bruce Jenner, broke the
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  world record at the appropriate Olympic trials.
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  He was the first guy to tell gender that he had broken the
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  record. And so Larry was one of these
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  guys who throughout the years would send me just pages and
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  pages of stats. Well, here's what Tim break.
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  Did you know that the cut at the community college championships
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  is what Dave Johnson's doing, look how you stack up and I
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  mean, there were rows and rows and columns and Columns of just
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  Stouts. And so I realized that Larry was
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  more than just a track coach. He was a track buff and he was
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  the guy who got me into decathlon, who else did you?
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  Continue doing the decathlon through High School.
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  It was at Larry all the way through or other McCollum not
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  sidecut more specific coaches. Like did you ever like, oh yeah,
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  then this spring coach came into this pool ball coach came in.
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  So Larry was he was kind of a jack-of-all-trades coach and as
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  I got, you know, after I got through that first decathlon, I
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  said that was so hard. I'm never doing it again and
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  low, and behold the next year old around, then I did it again.
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  And then, if you will, the one time that I did it again, and I
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  found myself. At the, at the, at the Junior
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  Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984 and the Junior Olympics were
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  going on at the same time as the Olympic trials.
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  And so literally the decathlon hundred meters ran and then it
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  was like men's first round of the hundred meter.
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  You know, 500 meters Elite right after us and I'm like I'm in a
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  warm up. Barry with Carl Lewis.
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  I couldn't I couldn't believe it.
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  But Larry was, you know, he was my he was he was my hurdle
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  coach, he helped me with some field events but Head coach at
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  the time, his name was Ron Smith, he's won.
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  So many state championships, Team titles, and individual
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  titles, and then our football coach.
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  And at this didn't thrill me, but my head football coach was
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  the throws coach on the football team are on the track team and
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  he was a hard-ass. I mean, Lee Schroeder was his
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  name and you could see him coming a mile away and he was
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  the guy who just would ground me into the ground.
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  My junior year of high school. I played football.
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  You know. Brian, you're slacking.
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  Your pacing yourself. You know, just one of those Guys
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  and I really appreciated him because he pushed me harder, but
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  when it came time to run the 300 meter hurdles, you know, he set
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  up 350 meters, he set up, 400 meters worth of hurdles and
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  that's how we trained and he made me a bit tougher.
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  So Ron Smith was the head coach. And I think he gets all the
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  credit, but Larry Hunt was the guy who got me into into the
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  decathlon. Did you stay in touch with him
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  throughout your career? Absolutely.
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  So Larry Larry and I were good friends, you know, he was the
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  guy who helped me, you know prepare for college and kind of
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  give me. Ideas on what to expect.
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  He was, you know, he was throwing my name around a
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  college coaches around the state, and nearby schools and
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  things like that. And so, I was just, I was always
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  been really grateful to him. He actually came and saw me
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  about a month ago here in Arizona.
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  He saw Bell Bank Park, the facility for the very first time
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  and he's a little bit older and, you know, he's struggling
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  health-wise but it was great to see him.
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  But he lives in Salt Lake City. He's got like eight kids and a
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  hundred grand kids and he's just living life.
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  So easy got Some family in Queen Creek here.
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  But but Larry was one of those guys.
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  And honestly as I got into the decathlon and I learned more
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  about Frank Jr.'s, Aronofsky, that's the kind of
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  guy Larry was just too just a huge stats guy and you could
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  tell he just he just loves the sport of track and field and
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  Larry convince me, this is what I should do.
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  And even when I went off to college, I wasn't sure that I
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  wanted to do the decathlon, but he just kept telling me, you
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  know, look, this is how good you can be.
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  This is what Gary Kinder's doing is.
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  What Dave Johnson's doing? This is what You know, this is
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  what the best guys in the country are doing.
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  You could be there someday. You know, I love hearing the
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  story about Larry because you know, decathlon is one of I
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  think maybe only two events that other events could probably make
• 14:44
  their case. But just have this fanatical
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  fanatical Finn Phantasm around them, the multis and pole vault
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  their own cultures. If you will, you know, my former
• 14:55
  now retired boss Fred Dixon, you mentioned the 76, Olympic
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  trials. You know, you know, that's all.
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  I mean Fred. That's all we would talk about.
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  I mean, you we would be at ncaa's and you know, the kid
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  would set the college hundred meter record and it would all be
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  like, you know how many points that would be in the decathlon?
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  Mike. I mean it's a little everything
• 15:11
  tied back to the Volta, he only wanted to hire, I don't know how
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  I got hired because I was not a multi, but he only wanted to
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  hire multis. It was, it's an amazing culture.
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  So I love that Larry had that culture and then instill That
• 15:24
  Into You. That's amazing.
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  Like so he changed the world of track, not just your world, the
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  entire track history, love it, you mentioned.
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  So, where do we go after high school?
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  You're an organ guy, so you go to work it, right?
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  That's what every organ kid does.
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  Well, that's what you dream about.
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  You know, I grew up wanting to be an organ, tuck, their Oregon
• 15:41
  Duck. Scuse me because of, you know,
• 15:43
  Joaquin Cruz and you know just some of those great programs
• 15:46
  that they had their I went on a recruiting trip to the
• 15:49
  University of Oregon. I went on a recruiting trip to
• 15:50
  Oregon State University and I was really you know I didn't get
• 15:53
  the scholarship offer. I would that I really wanted
• 15:55
  from Oregon. I got a decent scholarship offer
• 15:58
  from Oregon state but I was glad I didn't go there.
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  R, because they ended up dropping the program a couple,
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  right? But I had a great trip there,
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  but when I filled out my my college, just my college
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  questionnaire, I put all the events that I had done.
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  So not only had I done all ten events in the decathlon.
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  I triple jumped. I ran the 400 metres hurdles,
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  you know, from time to time and so when I would send out those
• 16:24
  questionnaires and Larry's, you know, helped me with a lot of
• 16:27
  them. I had a coach that just kept
• 16:29
  calling it, like, once a week, the coach, University of Idaho
• 16:32
  would call me. Hey is Mike Keller up here at
• 16:34
  Idaho? You know, saw your questionnaire
• 16:35
  and you know wonder if you want to come up for a visit I was
• 16:38
  like Idaho. I don't know if I want to go to
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  Idaho you know, it just it just wasn't what I envisioned.
• 16:43
  So it was during the NCAA championships in 1984 that coach
• 16:51
  Keller came to hook did a home visit in Klamath Falls Oregon.
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  He had a decathlete at the NCAA championships.
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  It finished around 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening.
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  He drove four hours to my house. To Klamath Falls.
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  Oregon talk to me for two and a half hours.
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  I don't think he was leaving my house until I signed my letter
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  of intent. It was one of those and he just
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  said, look, you're a fantastic athlete.
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  Look at all these different events you can do.
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  We'd love to have you to University of Idaho and at the
• 17:18
  time, you know, they kind of went back and forth, but at the
• 17:21
  time they were Division, 1 double A and football.
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  I thought, you know, well, they're not even division one,
• 17:25
  you know, I'm not even a big school but he, you know, he
• 17:28
  informed me, looking track and field and again basketball their
• 17:31
  And one. And, and so, you know, I signed
• 17:34
  my letter of intent with Idaho because he gave me a full
• 17:37
  scholarship, you know, top to bottom.
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  That's what I needed to go to college.
• 17:41
  I wasn't going to be able to pay for school myself, and my
• 17:44
  parents had never gone through the process.
• 17:47
  You know, nobody else in my family had gone to school, you
• 17:49
  know, gone to college and really nobody from my school had ever,
• 17:53
  you know, been in that process either.
• 17:55
  And so for me to kind of navigate that and understand you
• 17:59
  know the recruiting process I signed my letter of intent and
• 18:03
  just figured, you know, that's that's where I'm going to school
• 18:06
  but it was shortly after I signed my letter of intent that
• 18:08
  I got a call from Nebraska. Hmm.
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  And they said, hey, do you want to come out for a visit?
• 18:13
  And, you know, it was because the Tinker Hatfield And so
• 18:17
  Tinker Hatfield had some Nebraska connections and he
• 18:21
  called somebody over there and they started they started
• 18:23
  looking at me and watching me but I never went on a trip to I
• 18:26
  never went on a trip to Nebraska but after the state
• 18:28
  championships I took my recruiting trip to the
• 18:30
  University of Idaho. You know liked it and one thing
• 18:33
  that I liked about it is you know they got this beautiful
• 18:35
  indoor facility, three indoor track and when I was in the
• 18:38
  indoor track over in there it made all the hurdles look low.
• 18:42
  Okay so the 42 inches didn't seem like they were too high.
• 18:46
  Yeah and so Committed to the University of Idaho.
• 18:48
  And, you know, and the next fall I was, I was on my way, you
• 18:53
  know, that's interesting. It's really funny.
• 18:54
  Actually, I had a totally different College.
• 18:57
  You went to, because of a coach, who's going to come into your
• 18:59
  life here. So I didn't know, actually, we
• 19:02
  went to undergrad. I'm interested.
• 19:03
  You know, when we talk about recruiting especially the
• 19:05
  decathlete, especially a good decathlete, there's the almost a
• 19:10
  fear that if you go to a smaller school, well, they're going to
• 19:13
  burn you out because near the cathode is a very good, be very
• 19:16
  specific on how you're The things you can only do so many a
• 19:18
  year. You could take that poor athlete
• 19:20
  and put them into 100 events every meat, especially at a
• 19:23
  smaller school conference. You probably did the 100 events
• 19:27
  that that's going to burn you out in your athletic development
• 19:30
  is going to stall out. You already said you kind of
• 19:33
  didn't know the process anyway, you never do until you first go
• 19:36
  through the whole college recruiting process.
• 19:37
  Did you have any concerns going into Idaho?
• 19:40
  Like, oh man, I'm I'm not going to decathlon.
• 19:42
  I'm going to do 20 events. Every every meat because of the
• 19:45
  talent level, No, you know, that wasn't really my, you know, that
• 19:49
  wasn't my fear. But what I thought is, I was
• 19:51
  going to show up day one and I was going to show the football
• 19:54
  coach, how fast I was and get him to look at some of my high
• 19:57
  school tape and the following year I was going to play
• 19:59
  football and run track and field.
• 20:01
  And it's funny how that just never happened developed Iran
• 20:05
  routes for, you know, some quarterbacks in the summertime
• 20:07
  and, you know, I had guys who played wide receiver and stuff
• 20:10
  like that, but, you know, I was never afraid of, you know, oh,
• 20:15
  they're going to burn me out. But my freshman year there, I
• 20:18
  struggled with grades and I redshirted, okay, so the fall
• 20:22
  quarter, you know, the fall semester came and went.
• 20:24
  And here we are in the spring and so coach.
• 20:26
  And we had a really good team. Got we had a half dozen
• 20:28
  Jamaicans on the team. So we had three members of the
• 20:32
  Jamaican bobsled attending. The University of Idaho is
• 20:35
  sprinters. Oh, wow, yeah, so when I got
• 20:38
  there, it was the craziest thing.
• 20:39
  I see this sled out on the track and I said, what's that for is
• 20:42
  like, hey man were training for bobsled and it was just like
• 20:45
  bobsled What world am I in? Yeah, no it's absolutely crazy.
• 20:49
  And so it's funny to watch Cool Runnings and like I knew who the
• 20:54
  John Candy character was it was based on a guy named Trinidad,
• 20:57
  you know, he was from Trinidad and Tobago and we'll and then
• 21:00
  the Stokes Brothers, you know, with two strokes Brothers, to
• 21:03
  Stokes brothers, were on the run, the team Dudley ran track
• 21:06
  and field as well. And so it was really kind of
• 21:08
  Dudley Stokes was the older brother and he was the driver.
• 21:11
  And so I just fell into this like weird kind of, you know,
• 21:16
  see You a schnoor is like, I was surrounded by Jamaicans and
• 21:18
  Africans. My first year at the University
• 21:20
  of Idaho, they didn't need my points.
• 21:22
  But, you know, coach Keller. He really made me.
• 21:25
  He just spent a lot of time on my on my technical running I was
• 21:29
  I was my I had horrible form as you know leave coming out of
• 21:33
  high school going into college, I just drill drill drill, but I
• 21:36
  remember, I miss the world indoor 500-yard record by like
• 21:43
  three tenths of a second. That's how much quarter.
• 21:46
  While running I did indoors and I was running with a
• 21:48
  quarter-mile about the name of samko doin you know, coach
• 21:51
  Keller. I think just wanted to let me
• 21:52
  know that you know once you get to College it's a ton of it's a
• 21:54
  ton of hard work and it certainly was so.
• 21:57
  But I did do one decathlon that freshman year that I red shirt.
• 22:00
  I went down to Boise State and again I just wasn't sure that
• 22:04
  that was the event for me. Well, I just I kept fighting it.
• 22:07
  I think coach Keller had a plan for me, but it wasn't my plan.
• 22:11
  And then, and then the trouble started, okay?
• 22:14
  I went, you know, as first time this is really the first Time
• 22:16
  that I'm away from home and you know, it's easy to skip class,
• 22:19
  it's easy to go play golf, it's easy to you know hit a
• 22:22
  fraternity party on a Wednesday night and my grades really
• 22:25
  started slipping. And so the next year as a
• 22:28
  sophomore, I didn't compete because I was ineligible, and
• 22:31
  then lost my scholarship and the year after that, I paid for my
• 22:34
  own school and still didn't, you know, still didn't complete the
• 22:38
  workload. So I was ineligible then as
• 22:40
  well. And so I had to, I had to sit
• 22:42
  out, I just I wasn't going to school but I was you know, it's
• 22:46
  one of those Situations, where, you know, I lost my scholarship.
• 22:49
  I flunked out of school, but I didn't want to go home and face,
• 22:52
  everybody continue to live in Moscow, Idaho.
• 22:55
  And so I got a job. I was, I've worked in a cabinet
• 22:58
  shop, believe it or not. But all the time, all this,
• 23:01
  while Believe It or Not, Larry Hunt is writing me letters and
• 23:05
  sending me stats. Just I mean, it was pages and
• 23:08
  Pages, hang in there, you can still do it and I think because
• 23:12
  of that, you know, II never lost track of track and field.
• 23:15
  I would go to the track. The University of Idaho and sit
• 23:17
  in the top, you know, sit in the stock, top of the stands and
• 23:20
  watch track practice in the indoor facility.
• 23:22
  You know, I still would go out on my runs, I still would lift
• 23:25
  weights when I could, and it was the type of thing where it's
• 23:28
  like, you know, someday I'm going to get my life back on
• 23:30
  track. And I'm going to get back out
• 23:32
  there and luckily, I had a couple of really good, you know,
• 23:35
  coaches who didn't give up on me.
• 23:37
  And so, you know, I spent I spent a quiet winter alone in
• 23:41
  Moscow, Idaho, and I remember it was, it was, it was very
• 23:44
  depressing because I was alone on Christmas.
• 23:46
  Amos day and but I was too embarrassed to go home and face
• 23:50
  all my family and friends and say, you know, I'm out of
• 23:52
  school. I'm not running track.
• 23:53
  And so after that, Christmas break was over, I don't know
• 23:56
  where it came from or how, but I got the courage and up enough to
• 24:01
  go to Coach, Keller's house. And so I went to Mike, Keller's
• 24:04
  house knocked on the door and you know, it's 20 degrees
• 24:07
  outside and I didn't have a car. And so I'm probably walked three
• 24:09
  miles to get there. And I just said, what can I do
• 24:12
  to get back in school? And he said, let me ask Round.
• 24:16
  Let me make some calls but you got to be ready, you know.
• 24:19
  And I said, what do you mean he says?
• 24:21
  Yeah, I might you know who knows where you're going.
• 24:22
  If there's an opportunity and need to just, you know, put your
• 24:26
  stuff in a bag and be ready to go and literally probably two
• 24:29
  and a half, three weeks later, he called me and said the coach
• 24:33
  at Spokane Community College has a place for you.
• 24:36
  And honestly, it was just like who, you know, just it even
• 24:40
  today. It just touches me that, you
• 24:42
  know, he went that far to get me back in school and so, he drove
• 24:45
  me to Spokane. Can drop me off at the coach's
• 24:48
  office in Spokane and Dwayne Hartman, you know, got me.
• 24:52
  Forgot me for the, the spring semester in 1988, then what an
• 24:57
  amazing story of two specific under there, there's other
• 25:01
  people always involved but Mike Keller and Larry on here, you
• 25:07
  know, you told me, you know, suspended because of grades and
• 25:10
  then had to drop out because of Grey's this easily.
• 25:13
  The story could have ended there.
• 25:15
  And in fact, maybe most of the the time, unfortunately, the
• 25:17
  story does end right there. Coaches are like, yeah, we had
• 25:19
  this kid Dan. He, you know, he would have been
• 25:22
  pretty good could have done a lot of Events, maybe could've
• 25:24
  been to Kathleen but you know, just getting his act together.
• 25:26
  So you don't have time. I got other recruits.
• 25:28
  I got other kids in the team, these two coaches.
• 25:32
  They never stop believing you. And it sounds like thank
• 25:34
  goodness. You also never stop believing in
• 25:35
  yourself. You may have said, doubts, but
• 25:37
  you never said, hey, the story's not over.
• 25:38
  I'm continuing on what an amazing Testament to the power
• 25:42
  of coaches on young people. Well, it absolutely was and it's
• 25:47
  even it touches me today and that, you know, Larry Hunt, you
• 25:51
  know, just kept believing in me and my killer, you know, you
• 25:53
  talk about three strikes. Is like, no, he didn't give me
• 25:56
  three, you know, he didn't give me three chances.
• 25:57
  I mean, he gave me eight, nine ten.
• 25:59
  Okay. Yeah, decathlon's worth of
• 26:01
  chances. Yeah, absolutely did.
• 26:03
  But even, you know, and even beyond that, you know, coach
• 26:06
  killer drove me, you know, himself I had, I'm literally out
• 26:09
  of duffle bag and a garbage sack full of stuff and he dropped me
• 26:11
  off at the coach's office in Spokane Community College.
• 26:13
  College and little Dwayne Hartman.
• 26:15
  I don't know if you know the Wayne, but you know, little
• 26:17
  distance, coach five-foot-seven, you know, he's such a distance
• 26:22
  Guru. He probably got married in his
• 26:23
  running shoes but Duane Hartman just opened up his door and
• 26:27
  said, come in. We're going to take area and a
• 26:30
  day later. I had a job in the cafeteria and
• 26:33
  I was attending, I was attending classes all the classes.
• 26:36
  I needed to bring my grades up in at the junior college.
• 26:39
  No, and I, you know, couldn't run track for a few weeks and I
• 26:42
  used to go out and watch and then It was my turn.
• 26:44
  He was like suit up. Let's go.
• 26:46
  And it was a great opportunity for me to get a third or fourth
• 26:51
  chance because, you know, I'm going to Junior College.
• 26:53
  I'm older than a lot of the kids at that school but I just, I
• 26:57
  gave coach Hartman everything. I had, you know, I did the
• 27:00
  decathlon one weekend came back, you know, a week later and did
• 27:04
  seven events at their conference meet and I'll never headline
• 27:07
  read. You know, O'Brien Community
• 27:09
  College wins wins wins wins the conference title.
• 27:13
  Idol and I think I got second and two events and I won five of
• 27:17
  them at that at that conference. But you know I just again it's
• 27:20
  one of those things, you know. Thank God for Coach Hartman.
• 27:23
  Thank God for Coach Keller. And I remember well that Spokane
• 27:27
  you know the University of Washington coach would come down
• 27:29
  and see me run in Washington State University.
• 27:31
  Coach chaplain came over, he overwhelmed.
• 27:34
  You want full scholarship to come to Washington State and
• 27:36
  never even thought about it. I said I'm going back to Idaho
• 27:39
  for my last year of Eligibility. I'm going back to Idaho.
• 27:42
  Oh wow. Just and that's how strongly I
• 27:45
  felt. And was thankful that that coach
• 27:47
  Keller had done what he did for me.
• 27:49
  And I thought I owed it to him to go back to the University of
• 27:52
  Idaho and compete at least one season.
• 27:55
  Wow, Dan. I mean that, I don't know if
• 28:00
  that floors me but I mean the what's the word I'm looking for
• 28:05
  here? Ding at the dedication but the
• 28:08
  you know loyalty, yes. Yes, thank you.
• 28:10
  Doug, loyalty back to Mike and in the crew.
• 28:13
  Ooh, that helped you to start out.
• 28:15
  That's that's quite amazing and honestly keeping on the coaching
• 28:19
  side that Mike would take you back.
• 28:20
  I mean I was you know he worked hard like okay you know a day
• 28:22
  and maybe you just need to go somewhere, you know, dude,
• 28:24
  Spokane. Go somewhere else, you'll be
• 28:26
  fine. Mike was ready to bring you
• 28:28
  back. Oh man, that's so cool.
• 28:31
  And so, you know, I go back to University of Idaho and it was
• 28:35
  and and Coach Keller, you know, I think at this point was, you
• 28:38
  know, I was like a nephew to him, you know, he, he went out
• 28:42
  of his way to You know, to see where I was living and who I was
• 28:47
  living with. And, you know, I had, I had a
• 28:49
  kid who was a manager on the track team.
• 28:51
  I took a couple classes with him, I met with him a few times
• 28:54
  a week and we, you know, studied together and everything.
• 28:57
  Everything really changed my commitment level was was really
• 29:00
  high and a lot of people kind of ask me.
• 29:02
  It's like you know you know by the time you got out of college
• 29:05
  weren't you burn out? It's like know by the time I got
• 29:08
  out of college, I was ready to go because I hadn't put in all
• 29:11
  that mileage. I think about a guy like Dave
• 29:12
  Johnson, ER, Somebody who just did all that work in college and
• 29:17
  so I was chomping at the bit and so that year I went to the NCAA
• 29:22
  indoor championships and I ran the fastest time in the 60
• 29:25
  hurdles in the prelims and then I crashed in the finals.
• 29:31
  Earl Diamond, 11, the NCAA title.
• 29:34
  But I had run really fast against Robert reading and air
• 29:37
  cannon and those guys but cannon from pit went down, took me with
• 29:40
  him. So and then I remember long
• 29:42
  jumping Carl, Lewis, Coaching Leroy Burrell and I thought man,
• 29:46
  I'm a junk 2016. I'm going to jump 27 feet today
• 29:49
  and I and I think I jumped 2511 and I didn't make the finals.
• 29:54
  It was like you're Jumpin, Joe, Greene and Leroy and it was just
• 29:57
  like, oh my gosh, look at these guys, at the NCAA indoor
• 30:00
  championships. I mean at 5:11, I was like 11th
• 30:03
  place and so I had a good first year and then outdoors, I had
• 30:09
  the number one scorer in the country.
• 30:11
  And so coach killer took me to San Francisco State.
• 30:13
  I Or just under 8,000 points. And so I was at number 12
• 30:16
  Catholic in the country and then I hurt myself at the conference
• 30:18
  meet and I didn't get to compete at the NCAA championships and so
• 30:22
  Derek Hough from Arizona can thank me for not showing up at
• 30:26
  the NCAA Championship. You know, Dan, it's quite
• 30:32
  amazing. Knowing where the career ends
• 30:34
  up, you know, we talked about the coaches that didn't give up
• 30:38
  on you, and thank God for them and their belief and love of you
• 30:41
  to continue in that you. This is also Story of yourself
• 30:44
  not giving up on yourself. You know, the injuries, the
• 30:48
  crashing in the fine. I mean, if if we were to ask
• 30:52
  most probably track people and is, of course, definitely not
• 30:55
  attract people and say, hey, here's this guy, he wins an
• 30:57
  Olympic gold medalist, gold medal.
• 30:59
  Does this scores? This many points will block how
• 31:01
  do you think his college career went?
• 31:02
  And I call guy was definitely, probably by the way he went, he
• 31:04
  went to University. I do.
• 31:05
  Oh, the guy was, you know, he won everything every day, every
• 31:09
  title, heal easily. And it's like, oh, we have
• 31:11
  barely won a title. Didn't win the, you know, I'm
• 31:14
  sure you want to comfort. You, we won several Conference
• 31:16
  titles, but no National time and that's quite amazing where you
• 31:19
  could be. Like, you know, this has been
• 31:20
  great. I'm just going to go into the
• 31:22
  quote-unquote real world. Use this degree that I've been
• 31:24
  busting my hump to get by the way.
• 31:27
  Great for athletics, that's awesome.
• 31:28
  But you know, it wasn't meant for me.
• 31:30
  I'm going to go somewhere else and you just kept at it.
• 31:33
  Well, what's interesting about that is I remember a couple of
• 31:35
  moments when I wasn't in school and I wasn't and I wasn't
• 31:38
  running track and field and I, you know, I had this job at this
• 31:41
  cabinet shop and literally, I mean, my mom.
• 31:43
  My mom did a lot of woodworking when I was growing up and I took
• 31:46
  shop in high school and so I knew how to, you know, I knew
• 31:48
  how to use tools and things like that.
• 31:51
  But there was a, you know, I think that job ran out.
• 31:53
  I had to find a new one. I was slated to, you know, wash
• 31:57
  dishes at a restaurant at a hotel, and I remember the day I
• 32:03
  was supposed to show up my first day, I couldn't do it.
• 32:06
  I couldn't go and do it because I just felt that I was meant for
• 32:10
  something else and it was just one of those moments.
• 32:13
  That's where I just said, this isn't for me and it was two
• 32:17
  weeks later. I was in the car was headed to
• 32:18
  Spokane Community College, but I it was like that and I wonder if
• 32:22
  I take that job and I start making some money and paying my
• 32:25
  bills and settle in, you know, what happens to me and I just
• 32:28
  took ended up at Spokane, but you know what was interesting as
• 32:33
  well as, you know, coach killer, just kept telling me your
• 32:37
  decathlete, your decathlete. And I was just like all I need
• 32:39
  to do is run faster in the hurdles.
• 32:41
  All I need to do is long jump a little bit farther and We'll
• 32:43
  have to do the decathlon. But in 1988, when I was at
• 32:46
  Spokane Community, I went to an all, I went to a last-chance
• 32:50
  qualifier in Santa Barbara at Santa Barbara City College.
• 32:54
  And I scored, I think seventy four hundred points and I
• 32:59
  qualified for the Olympic trials in Indianapolis in 88.
• 33:02
  And so I had a little twinge in my hamstring at outdoor season,
• 33:07
  but I went to the Olympic trials without really an idea that day,
• 33:10
  you're going to make an Olympic team.
• 33:12
  I wanted to go compete. It's Dave Johnson and Tim bright
• 33:15
  and Gary Kinder in those guys. But when I was at that meat,
• 33:19
  I'll never forget what I saw Flo-Jo.
• 33:21
  Broke the world record in the 100, so it's 88.
• 33:24
  Yes. And then, and then Carl Lewis,
• 33:26
  I'll never forget in a torrential downpour takes one
• 33:30
  jump in the long jump. It's like 2810 and they closed
• 33:33
  the pit and it's it was most fantastic thing I ever saw.
• 33:37
  And so I get out there, I win the hundred in the decathlon and
• 33:41
  it was just pouring rain pouring buckets.
• 33:42
  We had to We were in the indoor facility in Indianapolis and we
• 33:46
  came out and just like two inches of standing water on the
• 33:48
  track. It's like I couldn't be,
• 33:49
  couldn't believe we were competing, but on that trip, I
• 33:52
  met Jackie Joyner-Kersee for the first time.
• 33:54
  Hmm, I'm on the practice track and Coach Keller, you know, says
• 33:58
  hey, that's Jackie Joyner. Let's go.
• 34:00
  Say hi. And so I went over and said hi
• 34:01
  to Jackie and Bob and Jackie was just like, oh, what are you
• 34:05
  doing? It's a Well qualified for the
• 34:06
  decathlon. However, I think I'm going to
• 34:09
  probably shift out of the decathlon.
• 34:12
  Do the long jump, do the hurdles and in a 20-minute conversation
• 34:15
  with Jackie. And Bob, they convinced me to
• 34:18
  stay in the decathlon. Wow, you could be great in this
• 34:21
  event, don't try to get out of it, embrace it.
• 34:24
  You could be the next Bruce Jenner and you know, I competed
• 34:27
  I dropped out after the long jump because my hamstring was
• 34:29
  acting up, but I remember being on a plane coming home thinking,
• 34:33
  okay, I'm done trying to get out of it.
• 34:36
  I'm a decathlete from this. Day forward.
• 34:39
  And what's interesting? Three years later I was a world
• 34:42
  champion. Hurry.
• 34:44
  Yep. What do you side note kind of on
• 34:48
  the athletic side to Catholics I do most decathletes do they all
• 34:53
  kind of at least at some point in the beginning try to talk
• 34:55
  themselves out of it like hey if I just a little faster in the
• 34:57
  hurdles or you know just a little bit better in the pole
• 34:59
  vault I got to do these ten events.
• 35:01
  I can just focus on one or two in your case, do everybody.
• 35:03
  All of them kind of go through that.
• 35:04
  Thought that talking their head, I think, certainly some of them
• 35:08
  do I do? I think Curtis Beach you ever
• 35:09
  had that. I don't know he can be a little
• 35:12
  faster than 15 you know but it's what one thing that a decathlete
• 35:16
  will tell you as is that no matter how you got there, the
• 35:21
  decathlon picks the guy. Yeah, I've heard that a lot the
• 35:25
  athlete, the athlete doesn't always pick the decathlon and so
• 35:28
  no matter how hard you try to get out of it, no matter you
• 35:32
  know no matter what you think your timeline is going to be you
• 35:34
  know you're always drawn back to it and it's Usually guys who,
• 35:40
  you know, have a little bit of trouble in their past, or, you
• 35:43
  know, need a need a way to burn some energy, and the Dave
• 35:46
  Johnson tell you. It's some crazy delinquent
• 35:48
  stories, delinquent stories as well.
• 35:51
  So, it's the decathlon, pixton pixie athlete.
• 35:54
  Yeah, those same Fred Dixon. You tell me there's like, Mikey,
• 35:57
  you would never guess who and how I was as a, as a high
• 35:59
  schooler compared to what, you know, me as my ice core and
• 36:02
  whatnot. Yeah, it's quite quite amazing.
• 36:04
  So, you know, today in 2023 it Is super hard for lots of
• 36:10
  reasons, financial and Cetera To Go Pro in the in the Maltese you
• 36:15
  were doing this back in the 88 era.
• 36:18
  So how did you decide to keep going after after Idaho, and did
• 36:23
  you stay with with Mike? Or how did that work out
• 36:25
  coaching wise? So after college, you know,
• 36:29
  after my last year of Eligibility, I still had, I
• 36:31
  still needed credits to graduate and I think one of the greatest
• 36:34
  disappointments that I can say that, you know, I love that.
• 36:38
  I Didn't stay with is, I didn't continue my education and finish
• 36:41
  my degree. So finishing my, you know, as I
• 36:45
  went into the 1989 year, you know, 1990 season, you know, I
• 36:51
  attended classes part-time, but once I got ranked World ranked,
• 36:54
  u.s. ranked. I just decided, you know what?
• 36:58
  I got to spend my time on the track and still to this day.
• 37:01
  I haven't completed my degree, which is thing that I've thought
• 37:04
  about, certainly, if I want a coaching position, the high
• 37:06
  level coaching position at a A major university or something.
• 37:10
  That's something that I would certainly need.
• 37:12
  But, you know, I'm not proud to say that, but it's just it's
• 37:16
  just a fact. And I think it's one of those
• 37:18
  things that I fi look back. And I think well, I should have
• 37:21
  at least done that, right? From an educational standpoint
• 37:24
  because that's the opportunity that was given me.
• 37:26
  But no coach Keller was my coach, I stayed in Idaho, you
• 37:30
  know, I picked up a couple of great part-time jobs and so I
• 37:32
  would, you know, I just just, you know, my first year
• 37:36
  post-collegiate I'd be at the Golf course at 5 a.m. and I work
• 37:40
  from, you know, five to five to ten or five to eleven.
• 37:43
  I'd pick up range balls and check people in.
• 37:46
  And then I'd go to another part time job where I, you know,
• 37:49
  painted apartments and clean clean departments for guy.
• 37:52
  You know, I had a buddy who was a slumlord and, you know,
• 37:55
  athletes check out our excuse me, at students, check out and I
• 37:58
  clean it up for him and then in the afternoon, you know, from
• 38:01
  from three to six, or to, to, you know, to to 7 or whatever.
• 38:04
  I would, I would train in the decathlon and I was, you know,
• 38:07
  at the time It was, that was listed as just a volunteer
• 38:10
  assistant at the University of Idaho.
• 38:11
  And that's what I did for, you know, a year and a half.
• 38:15
  You know, sometimes the jobs were better where I didn't need
• 38:17
  a couple of part-time jobs. I got a full-time job and that
• 38:20
  was, that was one of the things. But here's one thing I did do,
• 38:24
  when I needed a job when I needed some money, I went to the
• 38:28
  Elks Lodge. I went to the Rotary Club, and I
• 38:31
  stood up there at lunchtime and said, hi, my name is Daniel
• 38:33
  Bryan. I'm trying to go to the
• 38:35
  Olympics. I'm trying to, you know, I'm
• 38:36
  trying to be a professional track and field.
• 38:38
  Fleet, you know, you got a fence that needs to be painted or a
• 38:41
  lawn that needs to be mowed, you know, I'm looking to support
• 38:44
  myself and it really did a lot for me in the community, you
• 38:47
  know, people knew who I was and they knew what my the kind of
• 38:50
  knew what my path was and my vision.
• 38:53
  I like the example of humility of not thinking, hey, I'm going
• 38:56
  to be an Olympian. Hey, I've already, I should have
• 38:58
  188 if it weren't for my hamstring, you know, I should be
• 39:01
  given stuff. It seems very humbling of like,
• 39:04
  hey, hey guys. Here I am.
• 39:05
  I'm trying to make the Olympics. You need to Finn's painted, what
• 39:10
  do you need? I'll work for it.
• 39:11
  It doesn't matter. I love the humility there.
• 39:13
  I grew up, I grew up with doing a lot of hard work.
• 39:17
  That's one thing that in Klamath Falls Oregon I lived on 12 acres
• 39:21
  and my parents, you know, we had some livestock and we had a lot
• 39:25
  of chores to do but we still pull and a lot of wood to chop
• 39:28
  and, you know, I was, I was no stranger to hard work and so
• 39:32
  that that was easy. You know, I think my, it was
• 39:35
  great when I didn't have to work, you know, all I could do.
• 39:38
  All I had to do was wake up. Think about training and and and
• 39:41
  get to the track on time. So you know, I continued, I
• 39:44
  continue to hang out in Idaho and then my breakthrough year
• 39:46
  was 1998. There was a decathlon at
• 39:51
  Washington State University that the Cougars put on.
• 39:53
  And I went over there and scored 82 mid.
• 39:56
  So I, you know, bumped, my butt, my 79. 88 up, thumb my senior
• 40:00
  year college. And so I started to get on
• 40:01
  people's radar and and Coach Sloan who was the field of
• 40:08
  Banco. It Washington State University.
• 40:09
  He, you know, he took a look at me and he, you know, and at the
• 40:12
  same time that I was there, you know, he got onto my radar as
• 40:15
  well because coach Keller and I, we had all the running events.
• 40:19
  Lockdown, we were doing a lot of training and I was kind of
• 40:22
  piecemealing, all the field events, you know, we knew a guy.
• 40:24
  We you know, I'd work with the pole vault coach and I and Tim
• 40:27
  Taylor in the throes would help me, you know, would help me and
• 40:31
  I you know I became very proficient in some of that stuff
• 40:34
  but we didn't have anybody to tie it together.
• 40:35
  We weren't 100% sure how to train For the decathlon.
• 40:39
  And so in that year 1990 you know, coach Keller and I went
• 40:43
  over and talked to Rick Sloan. Well, John chaplain suggested
• 40:46
  it. You know, you know, John Chaplin
• 40:48
  coach chap. He's like, hey, you gotta give
• 40:50
  us alone. It's best feels make.
• 40:51
  Yeah, you know, you know Japanese so and I, you know, I
• 40:54
  got to thank him as well because he was one of those guys early
• 40:58
  on. In my development, that kept
• 41:00
  telling me you can do it. You know, and people kind of
• 41:04
  know, John Chaplin as a Gruff pushy guy.
• 41:07
  But I know what I have nothing but you know I you know, I've
• 41:12
  seen him react to some other people but he's a guy who always
• 41:14
  took me aside and just gave me no BS and just said, hey it's up
• 41:19
  to you, you can do it, you know, you got great, you got great
• 41:21
  people around you and you know even Chaplin was one of those
• 41:24
  guys who just always wanted you to always wanted me to come
• 41:27
  back, come back to Wazoo come back to Idaho you know how they
• 41:29
  love you and Idaho you know just go go or for them and and so you
• 41:33
  know he's somebody who I respect a lot.
• 41:37
  So you know I asked Coach loan to work with me a little bit and
• 41:40
  slow and give it to me straight. He's like look don't show up say
• 41:44
  your banged-up don't show up say you're tired injured.
• 41:47
  He said look if you show up I expect you to train.
• 41:50
  Hmm. Bottom line.
• 41:51
  He's like, I'm going to put on am gonna I'm gonna train my
• 41:54
  athletes. You can join me and, you know,
• 41:57
  he just, it was one of those things was just like, look, we
• 42:00
  start at 1:30. I expect you to be here at 1:00
• 42:03
  warming up and, you know, I'd roll in at 115 or 120, think I
• 42:07
  got it. Nick warm up and he knew better.
• 42:10
  You know, he'd come out and be to shot, put, you know, marks on
• 42:12
  the sand and how long you been here, you know, it's like, you
• 42:16
  know, and he even tell stories how, you know, I'd be in the
• 42:18
  middle of a high jump, you know, practice and somebody you drive
• 42:21
  by, you know, somebody dried by in a car and honk, and I'd stop
• 42:24
  and wave and, you know, hey, how's it going?
• 42:26
  And he's like, hey, what are we doing?
• 42:27
  You know, and so we had a coach Sloane to the team as our field
• 42:31
  of eight guy. And what's interesting is, you
• 42:33
  know, just throughout the years, I lived in Moscow, Idaho, every
• 42:37
  Pullman Old Town's on a hill. So I'm thrilled about, you know,
• 42:41
  having a four-wheel up your heel to get to a house.
• 42:44
  But no, I just thought Moscow is a little bit prettier town and
• 42:47
  so I lived in, I lived in Moscow, Idaho, ran at the
• 42:50
  University of Idaho in the mornings and then it did all my
• 42:52
  field events at Washington State and the afternoon.
• 42:54
  And what's interesting is, you know, people think I'm from
• 42:57
  Idaho and some people think I'm from Washington, but I have to
• 43:00
  remind, everybody know, I'm from Oregon and it's when we added
• 43:04
  coach Sloan, I just started getting better progressing.
• 43:07
  He knew Decathlon, my pole vault.
• 43:11
  When I think my freshman year of college, my pole vault was even
• 43:14
  my ear. My senior year of college gives
• 43:16
  me was like, twelve, six, thirteen feet and in 1991 coach
• 43:22
  slone helped me go from a 13 foot pole vaulter to a 17 foot
• 43:25
  pole vaulter. And that's, that's that's what a
• 43:28
  difference that that he made, I get to know coach loan a little
• 43:32
  bit through Fred and what a great unique guy when you
• 43:36
  describe the the no BS, you know.
• 43:38
  Don't come tell me you're banged up, you know, from what I know
• 43:40
  of coastline is like all the others kind of how he operated
• 43:42
  there. He always ran, whether he was
• 43:44
  tired, hurt sick. He was always going to get his
• 43:46
  run-in. He was, he was the no BS guy.
• 43:48
  I mean, if that's a great way to describe him, how did how did it
• 43:54
  work with the two coaches? You got to coach Universe of
• 43:58
  Idaho coach. It was, do you know, a lot of
• 44:01
  not, a lot of times sometimes. Egos can get in the way.
• 44:05
  I don't know, my, but I know coach Sloan.
• 44:08
  I'm like I said, coach known did not have any ego, but I don't
• 44:11
  think anybody has no ego. But were there ever times?
• 44:13
  There were conflicts and how did, how did the coaches work
• 44:15
  that out with you kind of in the center as the as the project if
• 44:19
  you will? Well, when I first got started
• 44:21
  and I was young and just getting into the decathlon and, you
• 44:24
  know, showed a lot of, you know, showed a lot of improvement
• 44:27
  early on both coaches. Really stayed in their Lanes.
• 44:31
  Okay. Coach Keller was the organizer,
• 44:33
  you know, he was the guy who, you know, went out of his way to
• 44:36
  you know, book flights. And, you know, different things
• 44:39
  and but shortly after I, you know, shortly after I went pro
• 44:42
  coach Keller retired and so he was no longer an official, you
• 44:47
  know, the official head coach at the University of Idaho.
• 44:49
  But he but he was, you know, he was my, he was my head coach, my
• 44:52
  running coach, and he would do a lot of the organizational part
• 44:56
  of it operations. And then coach kept coach Keller
• 44:59
  just would hand me over to coach Sloan in the afternoon and say
• 45:02
  he's yours. And I would do all my field
• 45:04
  events and most of my lifting over there and slowly over time,
• 45:07
  I spent more Time at Washington State and what I loved about
• 45:11
  Washington state was, you could see it was a step up Step Up in
• 45:15
  facilities, a step up in expectation.
• 45:17
  A step up in in coaching and, you know, it's just, it's a
• 45:21
  packets. It was a Pap 10 schools Pac-12
• 45:23
  school now. And it, I liked feeling like
• 45:27
  that, you know, all of a sudden. Now I'm in, you know, I'm in a
• 45:30
  weight room with with, you know, Ryan Leaf.
• 45:35
  I mean, I mean, I was, you know, I was in a in a weight room.
• 45:38
  With the Drew Bledsoe and you know, guys like Mark for Sagan
• 45:41
  and you know, it's just like, okay it's serious over here and
• 45:44
  you know we're what we're doing here and I by no means you know,
• 45:47
  was ever in a situation like Ashton Eaton was where I was a
• 45:51
  professional with a professional coach.
• 45:53
  That was dedicated to me. I was always kind of in and
• 45:55
  around the Collegiate system and so it was, it was coach loans,
• 45:58
  Collegiate system. It was only after school got out
• 46:01
  and then NCAA championships were over that he would, you know, he
• 46:04
  would then dedicate his practices to me, but I always
• 46:07
  worked in To the Washington State practice system.
• 46:10
  The University of Idaho, practice system.
• 46:12
  How did you as you continue to move from 82?
• 46:15
  Which at some, you know, first time, any time you break your
• 46:17
  first date thousand, that's a big deal for a decathlete
• 46:19
  nowadays. You got to kind of go 8250 and
• 46:21
  higher to start, okay? You're in conversations of
• 46:23
  making teams and maybe doing something at that Championship.
• 46:26
  As you start to move in from 80 to 100 plus and you have these
• 46:29
  two coaches, how were you as the athlete?
• 46:32
  And what I mean by that Dan is, you know, sometimes as athletes
• 46:36
  in the decathlon, it makes it like Like a ten times worse
• 46:39
  thing because there's 10 different events for you to do
• 46:40
  this. You start seeing well that
• 46:42
  person that that hurdler I want to run 13 flat.
• 46:46
  Well they're running 13 flat and they're doing this coach.
• 46:48
  Why aren't we doing this? Hey that I know I'm not the
• 46:50
  greatest shot putter but that shot Putters throw in 70.
• 46:53
  Why aren't we doing that kind of stuff so maybe I can throw 50,
• 46:55
  plus, whatever, you know, how are you is the athlete in
• 46:58
  regards to complete Trust of the coaches or any ego of like a
• 47:02
  coach. We need to look at something
• 47:03
  else. We need to do this.
• 47:04
  Do that. Well, what's interesting living
• 47:07
  in the Palouse and between Pullman and Moscow, it kind of
• 47:13
  kept me away from, you know, bubbling Lala, you know, I don't
• 47:17
  know if I would have managed well in Atlanta or Los Angeles
• 47:22
  for that matter. But I wasn't on the track with
• 47:25
  hundreds of people that could have influenced the way that I
• 47:28
  thought or approach the decathlon.
• 47:30
  We were doing it coach loans way, okay, we were doing it
• 47:33
  coach Keller's way and you know, Coach K.
• 47:36
  Coached all the athletes that Idaho and it was like look this
• 47:38
  is this is our, you know, this is our fourth quarter mile
• 47:40
  training, and this is and I bought into it and I think
• 47:43
  that's one of the most important things in athlete can do is just
• 47:45
  buy into the system. All right, I can't tell you how
• 47:48
  many guys, you know, come to college still consult with their
• 47:52
  High School coach because they're not pull V.
• 47:54
  You know, they're not jumping as high.
• 47:55
  They're not high jumping as high and it's like hey look over here
• 47:59
  by into this system. And I learned that early on
• 48:02
  because I remember when I was, you know, I was at University of
• 48:04
  Idaho. I had jumped six.
• 48:06
  Levin. You know and my technique wasn't
• 48:08
  great. But then when I started working
• 48:10
  with a coach loan at Washington State, I wasn't jumping as high
• 48:13
  and I got worried I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute,
• 48:15
  what's going on? And he said, trust me, you got
• 48:18
  to trust me. And literally two years later, I
• 48:20
  was jumping, 72. All right, and it was just like,
• 48:22
  look, buy into the system, make the changes you need.
• 48:25
  Sometimes the process is one step back to forward, one step
• 48:29
  back to forward. You're going to get there
• 48:30
  eventually. But you know, the athletes
• 48:33
  skills, go beyond just You know, learning how to jump, you know,
• 48:38
  learn how to get coached as well.
• 48:40
  And and I think you know of the of a lot of people that I've
• 48:43
  seen I was I was a super super coachable person and I trusted
• 48:48
  these two guys to get me there, you know, it wasn't until I got
• 48:52
  a little bit older and actually the failure 1992.
• 48:56
  Got me to change a little bit and to take more ownership of
• 49:00
  the process. But up until that point, I was a
• 49:02
  great Soldier. You tell me to do it, man.
• 49:04
  And I'm, and I'm going to do it. I love hearing that because, you
• 49:07
  know, a lot of times from outside looking in.
• 49:09
  We see great athletes such as yourself and we think, oh,
• 49:12
  little bit of prima, donna, you got to kind of Kid Glove coach.
• 49:15
  Um, what do you want to do today?
• 49:16
  You know, but I agree with you 100% because I think the the
• 49:20
  super successes that we've seen in me, when I say that, I don't
• 49:24
  mean necessarily gold medals. I mean, the kid who goes from
• 49:26
  11200, to attend 1600, in high school.
• 49:29
  That's that's super success. That's you've done an amazing
• 49:31
  job coach, those things happened.
• 49:33
  When the kid is coachable, when they're they I into the system.
• 49:37
  You you believe in the system is more important than what the
• 49:39
  system is in. The system is important.
• 49:41
  Trust me, but buying into it will get you Leaps and Bounds
• 49:45
  farther than trying to fight it or have all these outside
• 49:48
  influences. Pulling at you in different
• 49:50
  directions. Absolutely.
• 49:52
  And what's fun about the decathlon for me, is, it's your
• 49:55
  system versus my system, okay? And it's, you know, this is the
• 49:59
  way we lift weights, this is the way we train, and everybody does
• 50:02
  a little bit differently. And what's, you know, the in the
• 50:05
  proof is The end result, right? And so when you break a world
• 50:08
  record, when you when you us Championship you can say, look
• 50:10
  my systems better than anybody else's, I used to be scared that
• 50:15
  coach Sloan was going to allow somebody else to come into this
• 50:19
  camp and get coached. I mean I look at a guy like
• 50:21
  Sheldon blockburger or you know I drew fucci was one of the only
• 50:25
  athletes I ever had. Come train with me in Pullman
• 50:28
  Washington and it was just and Drew would walk away from there
• 50:33
  and just go, oh my gosh, I learned more in a weekend than I
• 50:35
  have. In months, just because he's
• 50:37
  hearing it from somebody else. But I just, I knew, I thought,
• 50:41
  and I knew at the time, I just especially with Coach know.
• 50:43
  And I think he, I think still to this day, he's one of the finest
• 50:46
  multi-event coaches in the world.
• 50:49
  All right. And that, and that did I just
• 50:50
  say that without, you know, any reservation whatsoever.
• 50:53
  He did the decathlon goes how to train for it, but he also has
• 50:57
  all this extensive knowledge he can coach any event.
• 51:00
  Yeah, I'm pretty key to your point.
• 51:01
  He doesn't get to do. He deserves the credit?
• 51:04
  He deserves your ear, right? I agree with that.
• 51:06
  At from learning a little bit more about him through Fred?
• 51:09
  What so, what other coaches did you work with for any extended
• 51:13
  period of time through the rest of your career?
• 51:15
  So what was fun for me was to, you know, work with, you know, I
• 51:19
  would travel with Washington State University as a volunteer
• 51:21
  assistant, coach, and we'd go down to UCLA for the the pac-10
• 51:25
  Championships or, you know, an Invitational.
• 51:28
  I would just sit and watch art Venegas.
• 51:30
  Mmm, right? Just just loved art, but I would
• 51:33
  watch him work with Dave dumble and John godina.
• 51:36
  And just, you know, and then Coach slow and you know, with a
• 51:39
  can dang it in The discus session and I'd get in there and
• 51:41
  and and art would just go, hey, you know, you handle it pretty
• 51:44
  well and he give me some tips here and there, but what was
• 51:47
  great about my coaches is I would come back with stuff and
• 51:49
  say, hey, look, Tony Campbell was doing this with his blocks
• 51:52
  in the start of the hurdles, why shouldn't we and Coach?
• 51:54
  Slow would say, all right, we'll try it, if it works, we'll use
• 51:58
  it. Alright, explain to me why you
• 52:00
  think it would work? We'll give it a go but if it
• 52:02
  doesn't, I don't want to hear another thing about it is this
• 52:06
  Okay, so my coaches were, you know, they I would, you know,
• 52:09
  and that's the thing. Every time I came back from
• 52:10
  them, it is Modesto. Realize, every time I came back
• 52:12
  from the mount sac, relays, I had an idea on a technique or
• 52:15
  something, but I just, you know, I think one of the things that,
• 52:19
  as well, as we talked about coaches, it goes back to being
• 52:22
  in the system. There were things that I brought
• 52:24
  into the system that we used. And so, I trusted that system
• 52:28
  when it came to, you know, bringing techniques back in.
• 52:31
  But something amazing happened in the early 90s to the
• 52:34
  decathlon. And that The Visa decathlon
• 52:37
  program? Yeah.
• 52:38
  Right. And so at that point, it was the
• 52:42
  US has bid to get back the Olympic gold medal in the
• 52:46
  decathlon. So Fred Samara Princeton and
• 52:48
  Harry Mara at San Francisco State.
• 52:51
  These two guys, you know, former decathletes both of them just
• 52:54
  love the decathlon. We hadn't had an Olympic
• 52:56
  champion since 76 Bruce Jenner and they said, we got such great
• 53:00
  history in the decathlon and they tried to find a corporate
• 53:03
  sponsor and they went all over the place.
• 53:04
  And finally, they met a guy. Guy by the name of John Bennett
• 53:07
  at visa and John Bennett senior vice president of marketing at
• 53:12
  the time. He fell in love with the
• 53:14
  decathlon and the Besa decathlon program was created and what
• 53:17
  that program was was sponsorship and funding for the top 10
• 53:22
  decathletes in the country and then they put on two large
• 53:25
  clinics every year, one in the fall and one in the spring and
• 53:28
  the one in the spring was usually at the same location
• 53:31
  that the u.s. Championships are going to be
• 53:33
  held or the Olympic trials. And so we got As to see the
• 53:36
  facility practice on it, you know, go back and forth to the
• 53:40
  hotel and just kind of see everything we had it.
• 53:43
  Of course, you know, 1996, we had a couple of clinics, we had
• 53:45
  both of our clinics in Atlanta, you know, just because that's
• 53:48
  where the Olympics were. But that changed everything for
• 53:51
  not only me, but for a lot of decathletes, the Visa decathlon
• 53:55
  program existed from 1990 to 1997 98 and then it phased out.
• 54:02
  But during that time, Americans had never scored higher as a
• 54:06
  group from places 1 through 5 1 through 6 run through seven.
• 54:10
  You look at the Olympic trials scores in 1992, you look at the
• 54:13
  Olympic trials scores in 1996 you know, you don't make an
• 54:16
  Olympic team in 1996 unless you score, 80 600 points, you know
• 54:20
  you don't qualify for the we had 46 guys at the Olympic trials in
• 54:24
  1992 and now it's like you get 18, get plenty.
• 54:29
  Maybe you know it's like where is everybody?
• 54:31
  This program was designed Signed know to keep guys in the sport
• 54:35
  you know guys who would be aging out.
• 54:37
  Just like man if I get in the top 10 I get some funding, I'll
• 54:40
  go to these camps and Clinics but these camps and Clinics were
• 54:43
  designed to share ideas. So I would show up with both my
• 54:48
  coaches. Dave Johnson would show up with
• 54:50
  Terry Frandsen and Kevin read and our net, you know, Ed Miller
• 54:55
  would be there. And we would have these day-long
• 55:00
  training sessions, where you had to spend time.
• 55:03
  I'm with other coaches I learned more in an afternoon with Mike
• 55:07
  Maynard. Then I did an entire year in The
• 55:10
  discus. Mike Maynard taught me how to
• 55:12
  come out of the back and The discus and my coach probably
• 55:14
  told me how and was helping me get there, but his explanation
• 55:18
  of it, his understanding of it really helped me come to terms
• 55:22
  with what I needed to do and make that move.
• 55:23
  And so it was all of these coaches sharing ideas with these
• 55:26
  young decathletes. And everybody would walk away
• 55:29
  from those clinics and just go, oh my gosh, we're getting so
• 55:32
  much out of it and so they would continue.
• 55:33
  In you, but they would also bring in highly inspirational
• 55:36
  people. You know, we got to meet Bob,
• 55:40
  Mathias, Rafer, Johnson, milk, Campbell bill, to me and of
• 55:44
  course, Bruce Jenner. And I remember the very first
• 55:46
  decathlon Clinic that I went to was in San Francisco, you know,
• 55:50
  we stayed San Francisco Marriott and we had a morning called the
• 55:54
  gold medal for more. We were going to get to hear
• 55:56
  everybody's story all those gold medalist, the existing list and
• 56:01
  you know, I coming down the elevator thinking.
• 56:03
  I'm eating, I'm eating gods of the sport here, I mean Ray for
• 56:07
  jobs. There's a Star constellation,
• 56:09
  you know, and that's why for this guy, right?
• 56:12
  And so I remember I went into the conference room and I was
• 56:15
  disappointed because they were just man, Amadeus was old and
• 56:20
  milk. Campbell was overweight and you
• 56:22
  know, Bruce Jenner didn't look the same as when he competed and
• 56:25
  and I thought, wow they just man but then I listened to them and
• 56:29
  it was like, oh my gosh, every one of them had such an amazing
• 56:32
  story, but what you realize is As they thought differently,
• 56:35
  they thought differently than their competitors, they thought
• 56:37
  differently than the guys in the competition.
• 56:39
  I mean built to me stories, absolutely amazing.
• 56:42
  So you know milk Campbell, everybody got to tell their
• 56:44
  story and speak and milk Campbell was second up after Bob
• 56:48
  Matthias and he told his story and Milt was so committed to
• 56:51
  winning the Olympic gold medal that he told his mom Mom.
• 56:53
  I'm coming home with the gold or I'm coming home in a box.
• 56:56
  Meaning he was really willing to die for that glove.
• 56:59
  He had to take a boat to Melbourne Australia, he didn't
• 57:02
  fly there. Who's a three-week boat ride.
• 57:06
  Wow. So Milt was speaking and this
• 57:09
  out of nowhere. He pointed at me and said,
• 57:11
  Daniel Bryan, stand up. And I had shaken milt's hand for
• 57:15
  10 seconds before the meeting and in front of my peers and I'm
• 57:19
  in front of Chris, wasn't part of the group at that time.
• 57:22
  But I'm in front of, you know, Dave maass gay and Dave Johnson
• 57:26
  and Gary Kinder and J Thorson. And, you know, all these guys
• 57:30
  from the 80s. And he says, what do you want to
• 57:33
  be son? And I just want to be a great
• 57:36
  athlete, just like you and he said you should already quit
• 57:39
  your All-American in college, you know, one high school state
• 57:41
  championships, you're a great athlete.
• 57:43
  You're here because you're a great athlete.
• 57:45
  What is the one thing that you want and nobody's ever asked me
• 57:48
  that tough question? Nobody asked me that question
• 57:52
  and I said, It was my moment and it didn't I didn't think about
• 57:57
  it. All I want to do is make money
• 57:58
  in the sport, all I want to do is you know, do the best I
• 58:00
  could, but at that moment, everything changed.
• 58:03
  It was like ah I want to be the Olympic gold medalist, I want to
• 58:06
  stand on the podium at the Olympic Games.
• 58:08
  I want to be called the world's greatest athlete, just like you
• 58:10
  guys. And we'll just said, write it
• 58:12
  down. Look at it every day know what
• 58:14
  it is, you're trying to accomplish.
• 58:16
  And so, you know, after milk came Rafer Johnson bill to me
• 58:21
  and Bruce Jenner and honestly, I don't even Remember what anybody
• 58:25
  else even seem well, I changed my path became clear at that
• 58:29
  particular moment. And so the meeting got over, I
• 58:31
  went up to my room and I wrote on a piece of paper, I'll be the
• 58:33
  greatest decathlete ever. And on the other side, I wrote,
• 58:36
  nine thousand points and I carried that with me everywhere
• 58:40
  I went, and I got to know milk very well and Milt would, you
• 58:44
  know, we were talking on the phone.
• 58:45
  He's, I want you to stand in front of mirror.
• 58:46
  I want, I want you to tell yourself.
• 58:47
  You're a world champion, and I hadn't won a US championship at
• 58:51
  the time, right? Yeah.
• 58:54
  Some and I did it. I tried feel silly at first but
• 58:58
  then I, you know, my Coach Rick Sloan would ask me about once a
• 59:01
  month or either world champion. So this is 1991 season.
• 59:03
  We got a world champion ship later in the year and coach
• 59:06
  would ask me in March, you do world champion, Tim Berry the
• 59:08
  world champion. I was like, maybe then he'd ask
• 59:12
  me get in, Maori the world champion and by the time we got
• 59:14
  to July, he asked me, are you the world champion?
• 59:17
  And I looked at him and said, yeah, today I am the world
• 59:20
  champion. I will be the world champion and
• 59:23
  August came and I, you know, I got it done in Tokyo and that
• 59:27
  was my first world title, but it was just meeting those guys in
• 59:31
  this program changed. Every changed.
• 59:33
  Absolutely everything for me. We had so glad and there was no
• 59:37
  way we were going to talk to Kathleen without Harry Mira
• 59:39
  coming into the conversation. Here.
• 59:41
  He was one of the, one of the original like, um, 20 G's of the
• 59:43
  podcast. I think he might have been
• 59:44
  episode 13 and 14. He actually and, you know, Harry
• 59:48
  well and I've gotten to know him.
• 59:50
  I love him to death. I consider my good friend when I
• 59:53
  approached About being on the podcast.
• 59:56
  I was like hey but here I'm going to have a is the big hairy
• 59:58
  audacious goal here. By the way, I was like I don't
• 1:00:00
  want you to come in and talk about, you know, one time, do
• 1:00:03
  your story, we actually did three episodes with him.
• 1:00:06
  So we did, we did as a regional all the way up at the, so his
• 1:00:09
  journey all the way up until Oregon and then we did the
• 1:00:11
  organ. Brianne Dash jinxing, it was
• 1:00:14
  pretty special time for the decathlon and then we did his
• 1:00:18
  coaching philosophy. The three p's on a third one,
• 1:00:21
  but he mentioned mentioned John Bennett.
• 1:00:23
  When you said that, I was like, okay I know that name and that
• 1:00:26
  Visa program, and Fred Samara, and just he mentioned, you just,
• 1:00:29
  you know, not only great group of athletes and people and
• 1:00:33
  coaches, but just kind of that amalgamation of all together.
• 1:00:37
  Really produced really changed the decathlon for the better at
• 1:00:41
  that point. I mean, really, we had never
• 1:00:43
  seen in totality what had that came out of that.
• 1:00:47
  What occurred from that? Well, I got to, you know, not
• 1:00:50
  just here, he being with Ashton. But before that, in this
• 1:00:52
  decathlon program, ice A tons of time with Harry and Fred and
• 1:00:56
  what you realize is, and, and here is one of those coaches
• 1:00:59
  that I always looked at. He's like, man, he never had a
• 1:01:02
  racehorse, you know, he never had the Thoroughbred that could
• 1:01:04
  get him to the Finish Line. He coached a lot of guys, you
• 1:01:08
  know, and you look at a coach like that and think, well, you
• 1:01:11
  know, maybe there's something lacking from a technical
• 1:01:14
  standpoint, but you know, Ashton shows up and it's like, oh no,
• 1:01:18
  you got to have a thoroughbred to win a championship here, you
• 1:01:20
  know, the guys got to be able to get it done, but I can, you
• 1:01:23
  know, just just for instance, you know, I spent one of the
• 1:01:26
  first International trips I took with Coach Harry Mara and Fred
• 1:01:29
  Samara is, I went to the Spanish national championships in 1991
• 1:01:33
  in Barcelona and we did that and that the we had five guys on the
• 1:01:39
  decathlon team the decathletes competed against the Spanish
• 1:01:42
  decathletes in a team competition but I went because I
• 1:01:45
  had qualified for the World Championships just to do
• 1:01:47
  individual events and so I could run in all the I could do the
• 1:01:50
  field events and run in the first round at their
• 1:01:52
  championships, but I couldn't run.
• 1:01:54
  The finals or the pre semis of the finals.
• 1:01:56
  Well, I got to spend, you know, two and a half.
• 1:01:58
  There's one and a half weeks, two weeks with Harry and Fred.
• 1:02:01
  And at that competition, I remember, you know, Harry's just
• 1:02:05
  vim and vigor. You know, I threw 52 meters in
• 1:02:08
  The discus and Harry's just like oh baby, you're ready, you're
• 1:02:11
  ready. You'll be, that's it.
• 1:02:13
  And I remember I, you know, I vaulted 525 when the pole vault
• 1:02:17
  and I come over to the stands and high-five, and Harry, and
• 1:02:20
  Fred, and Coach Sloan, and Coach Keller.
• 1:02:22
  And I said, you know, I think I can be an 18-footer.
• 1:02:26
  And Fred Samara sat me down and said, You probably could be but
• 1:02:33
  I don't want you to try to become an 18-footer.
• 1:02:37
  I want you to jump 525 every time.
• 1:02:39
  Hmm. And I was just like, huh?
• 1:02:42
  And I thought about that I was just like, wait a minute.
• 1:02:46
  All right. And I never forgot that I could
• 1:02:49
  have spent more time in the vault.
• 1:02:51
  I worked on my plant and he was just like, no get good at this.
• 1:02:56
  Right if I 25:25, he said that's that's phenomenal.
• 1:03:00
  The goal is to do that in every decathlon, you might go 550 at
• 1:03:04
  some point, but we don't want to go back, you know, you don't,
• 1:03:07
  you don't want to be 480. 490 guy.
• 1:03:09
  Now, be this good all the time, right?
• 1:03:12
  Never forgot about that. And Fred was one of those guys I
• 1:03:14
  think who gets a little bit overlooked because everybody
• 1:03:17
  remembers Bruce Jenner, but Fred was that other decathlete on
• 1:03:20
  that team, he and Fred and then and then Bruce but Fred was
• 1:03:25
  phenomenal athlete. Think about the coaching career
• 1:03:28
  Fred has had but I'll never Forget Fred.
• 1:03:30
  Fred said, I know I did a good job when I can just go up in the
• 1:03:33
  stands and sit and watch because there's so much interaction
• 1:03:36
  between coach and athlete. And I think maybe too much at
• 1:03:39
  times the coaches like alright we're going to move our foot
• 1:03:41
  like back what we're going to move up a fist and it's just
• 1:03:43
  like, you know, there's going to be a moment when the athlete
• 1:03:46
  can't turn to the coach and say, right, what do I do?
• 1:03:49
  And I mean I learned that, you know, through guy dragging my
• 1:03:52
  poles to Modesto relays from by myself for the first time and
• 1:03:55
  have you know, Vault with nobody catching my step.
• 1:03:58
  And but Fred Wu Is one of those guys to that when he spoke man
• 1:04:02
  you listened. Yeah absolutely listen but thank
• 1:04:05
  God for those two guys. They did that Visa program
• 1:04:08
  changed the decathlon, it's awesome and I love it.
• 1:04:10
  Those were great times and really amazing people that
• 1:04:13
  continue to do it today you know here he still speaks and just
• 1:04:17
  finished a book of his own and then Fred Samara is I mean the
• 1:04:21
  ivy league. You know the championship, the
• 1:04:23
  help stat title goes through Princeton.
• 1:04:25
  You were going to have to be Princeton if you want to win the
• 1:04:28
  ivy league. Mmm.
• 1:04:30
  Where Do We Go From Here? Dan.
• 1:04:33
  I want to make sure we spend time after the decathlon.
• 1:04:35
  We're so you do all this. You have all the success.
• 1:04:40
  What does it? Yeah, Dan and Dave of course,
• 1:04:42
  well, I say everybody half our audience is like 25 years old.
• 1:04:45
  So I wonder how many if you are listening and we just said Dan
• 1:04:48
  and Dave if you don't know what that is you gotta go.
• 1:04:51
  I won't say Google or go to YouTube and watch the videos.
• 1:04:54
  Again, these are its goes back to the action figure.
• 1:04:56
  These are just more things that we need to do more track and
• 1:04:58
  field, man. It was fun.
• 1:04:59
  Rose quite quite phenomenal. I remember just being a little
• 1:05:03
  high schooler in Alabama and was just, you know, every time I
• 1:05:06
  think I watch TV just to see those commercials and they were
• 1:05:08
  so fun. That was all that was a good
• 1:05:10
  time for track and field for two little old decathletes make.
• 1:05:14
  Yeah, we got to experience it, you know, for most that year it
• 1:05:18
  was. Here's what Michael Jordan felt
• 1:05:21
  like, here's what Joe Montana felt like, you know, we were
• 1:05:25
  front and center in the in the in the Sports World.
• 1:05:28
  Not just track and field. World Bright Sports World and so
• 1:05:32
  you know I have a very successful 1991.
• 1:05:34
  I'm a Reebok athlete, they signed me at the beginning and
• 1:05:37
  it was kind of a great and a sad day I made some money you know
• 1:05:40
  as and I was able to train full-time but I had to give up
• 1:05:42
  my job at the golf course you know.
• 1:05:45
  So when I got that sponsorship but you know you're to for me,
• 1:05:48
  rolls around 1992, I'm coming off a world championship.
• 1:05:51
  I'm the favorite to win the gold medal.
• 1:05:53
  And Dave Johnson was the previous best American.
• 1:05:56
  He had placed high at the Goodwill games.
• 1:05:58
  He won the Goodwill games in 1990 and So, you know, an ad
• 1:06:01
  agency said, hey we got the two best guys.
• 1:06:03
  And so this was, this was a really interesting campaign.
• 1:06:07
  They took two unknown guys in an unknown event and Reebok was
• 1:06:12
  trying to get into the shoot, the running shoe industry,
• 1:06:15
  haven't had a presence in that industry and it was a it was a
• 1:06:19
  risk for them. So they allotted the majority of
• 1:06:22
  their marketing dollars or sponsorship marketing dollars
• 1:06:24
  that year to this Dan and Dave campaign.
• 1:06:26
  And, you know, they called me up and said, hey, you know, we got
• 1:06:29
  got there were Reebok stores all over the country.
• 1:06:31
  Hey, we got our sales and, you know, operations, meetings in
• 1:06:34
  Orlando, Florida, would you please join us?
• 1:06:36
  You know, it's like, yeah, you know, I'm a Reebok athlete, not
• 1:06:38
  those, you know, I meet Dominique Wilkins and rajib
• 1:06:41
  Ishmael and, you know, some of the, some of the Reebok athletes
• 1:06:45
  and then they, you know, I got a meeting Dave and I have a
• 1:06:48
  meeting, Dave's a Reebok athlete as well.
• 1:06:49
  We have Dave, a meeting and they sit us down and they said this
• 1:06:52
  is what we want to do. Dan versus Dave, who's the
• 1:06:55
  world's greatest athlete, they explained it all to us.
• 1:06:57
  It's a series of commercials were going to run them all year
• 1:06:59
  long. And they said, well, what do you
• 1:07:00
  guys think? Do you think you'd be up for
• 1:07:01
  that? And we're just like, yeah, well,
• 1:07:04
  I think we would be. They knew we would say yes
• 1:07:08
  because directly after that, we marched down to a ballroom and
• 1:07:12
  there were a thousand people in a ballroom and they put up on
• 1:07:14
  the screen. Here's what's coming in 1992 and
• 1:07:17
  it was step Reebok. And then there was that Reebok
• 1:07:21
  commercial where the guy was like, surf.
• 1:07:23
  He had a, he had like a he had like a snowboard on but he was
• 1:07:29
  flying. Flying through the air.
• 1:07:30
  It with a parachute variants. French guy did this whole ballet
• 1:07:34
  thing in the air and Dan and Dave and they marched and they
• 1:07:37
  marched us up the throngs of people Reebok people, Dan and
• 1:07:42
  Dave, who are you guys and so, you know, shortly after that we
• 1:07:45
  I went to Los Angeles. Dave lived in LA but I went to
• 1:07:48
  LA and we did like two weeks of filming commercials and you
• 1:07:53
  know, there was it was interesting, you know, you think
• 1:07:56
  it's glamorous, I'm going on, you know, I'm going to
• 1:07:58
  Hollywood, I'm gonna film some commercials, you know, 5:00 a.m.
• 1:08:00
  call times. You know, they take us to the
• 1:08:02
  Laker games and you know you'd be sitting Courtside and until
• 1:08:06
  you know 11:00 then you go out and then you know your car is
• 1:08:09
  Sir your cars here. It's 5:15 a.m. and it's like oh
• 1:08:12
  my gosh. So maybe to do business isn't so
• 1:08:14
  fun but we did those, we did those ads and then Super Bowl in
• 1:08:18
  1992, Super Bowl Sunday, Those ads.
• 1:08:21
  Premiered, that's right and everything changed.
• 1:08:24
  You know, I was a decathlete in a small town now, you know, Dan
• 1:08:28
  and Dave or Or you know to commercial to commercial TV
• 1:08:32
  stars, everybody knew us, you know, we went, whether it was a
• 1:08:36
  Mount Sac or Modesto, or Seattle, you know, track meets.
• 1:08:39
  I went to now twice as many people would show up.
• 1:08:42
  You know, I had to have security to get around, you know, to get
• 1:08:46
  around the Modesto relays that year, just weird, you know, and
• 1:08:50
  there were some ideas, you know, I'd be sitting, you know, I'd be
• 1:08:54
  sitting eating snacks, waiting to film a commercial and I'd
• 1:08:57
  look at Dave and just think, We gotta get to the track brother.
• 1:09:00
  Yeah, right we go. This is my 400-meter training
• 1:09:04
  here. And, you know, but my coaches
• 1:09:06
  were conscious of that, I always was doing, you know, workouts.
• 1:09:09
  And then when we were at, when I was home, I was, it was, it was
• 1:09:12
  serious, you know, serious training.
• 1:09:14
  So, you know, Dan and Dave, everybody kind of looks at it
• 1:09:17
  and, you know, it takes us all the way to the Olympic trials,
• 1:09:19
  and it was a roller coaster year that ended very strangely but it
• 1:09:27
  changed my life. So, you know, at the, I don't
• 1:09:30
  know why or who set it up and you got to blame probably Duffy
• 1:09:34
  Mahoney, but the Olympic trials were in New Orleans.
• 1:09:36
  That's right. Here in July.
• 1:09:38
  Yeah, yeah. Oh man, that's perfect time.
• 1:09:44
  We had our Visa Clinic earlier in the spring on that same track
• 1:09:48
  and I'll never forget, it's an afternoon session and Visa lady
• 1:09:53
  comes up to me and says, hey, there's a group of school kids
• 1:09:55
  coming in, Bruce's going to talk to the kids.
• 1:09:57
  Would you mind joining Him. And I was like, oh no, not at
• 1:10:00
  all. So I do that.
• 1:10:01
  Go over and talk to the kids. Well, during that time,
• 1:10:03
  everybody was pole vaulting. All right, and so I missed the
• 1:10:07
  pool ball practice. I'm talking to kids.
• 1:10:10
  And so I'm at the Olympic trials, you know, a few months
• 1:10:12
  later. I've had some weird had like a
• 1:10:15
  stress fracture in my, you know, my lower shin and had to wear an
• 1:10:19
  air cast, but I was getting my training in.
• 1:10:20
  I wasn't in the best shape of my life, but I was finally healthy,
• 1:10:24
  didn't get as many competitions in, but I get to the Olympic
• 1:10:26
  trials and, you know, I'm on world record Pace after day one.
• 1:10:31
  What was interesting though is Nobody comes and watches the
• 1:10:35
  first event of the decathlon, right?
• 1:10:37
  It's just it's family friends. People who want to get up that
• 1:10:40
  early? Well Dave and I show up at the
• 1:10:42
  track at 9:30 and there are thousands of people in the
• 1:10:45
  stands and they're all wearing white t-shirts with a dancer.
• 1:10:47
  A Dave on the front, it was a blue box.
• 1:10:50
  I was of Dan was a red box and it was like, Reebok dropped him
• 1:10:54
  out of a helicopter. So, you know, they handed them
• 1:10:57
  out to every person that went in all of a sudden.
• 1:10:59
  Now, we got thousands of people sitting there watching the
• 1:11:01
  hundred meters in the decathlon at 9:30. 10:00 In the morning.
• 1:11:04
  Wow, yep. So I get through day one and I'm
• 1:11:07
  feeling pretty good, and then the second day I run pretty
• 1:11:10
  conservatively in the hurdles. I don't throw the discus as far
• 1:11:13
  as I would like. But then we settle in for what
• 1:11:15
  is, you know, the for our pole, vault session special, guys, you
• 1:11:19
  know, we got two pits going, we got 20 guys on each pit and, you
• 1:11:23
  know, I take on my warmup runs and jumps and, and sit, and
• 1:11:26
  wait, you know, it's at 4:30 and 440 and 450 and my standard
• 1:11:33
  height was Ready. That's what I did in practice.
• 1:11:36
  That's what I did in all the meats leading up, and I never
• 1:11:39
  had any problems with it. And so, I just, you know, I
• 1:11:41
  think what got me a little bit, was the Heat.
• 1:11:43
  And so I come down the runway and my first attempt and just
• 1:11:46
  like way under, and I come straight down on the pole and
• 1:11:50
  are the bar and I just, I'm not even close, and it's just like,
• 1:11:53
  oh, right, you know, I, you know, learning experience
• 1:11:56
  because you're in 100-degree temperatures, think you're warm
• 1:12:00
  but you're not. All right.
• 1:12:02
  Yeah, you got to keep moving. You got to keep cupcake.
• 1:12:04
  Grunting stay loose and that was kind of the misconceptions on
• 1:12:07
  the second attempt. I was over and I don't even know
• 1:12:10
  what touched it. I'd like my jersey just barely
• 1:12:13
  brushed it and it came down and so all of a sudden before I know
• 1:12:16
  it, I'm on a third attempt at the Olympic trials.
• 1:12:22
  In the pole. Vault, what was that?
• 1:12:24
  Was that was that foreign to you because so I worked with another
• 1:12:27
  decathlete, that, you know. Well, mr.
• 1:12:30
  Trey Hardee and tray. When we were together at
• 1:12:33
  Mississippi State, he made it a, I don't know, I just thought it
• 1:12:36
  was a fun game for him. He liked to go third attempt on
• 1:12:38
  first bar. Every time, every time we do a
• 1:12:40
  Texas relays every time, like you're killing me here, man.
• 1:12:43
  But was that a new thing for you to be in that situation or had
• 1:12:46
  this had occurred before? I can't remember up until that
• 1:12:50
  point being on a third attempt at an opening bar especially at
• 1:12:54
  in a decathlon. Um, you know, so much so much of
• 1:12:57
  the emphasis in the decathlon is get safejump you know, safe
• 1:13:00
  throw, get him, get him, get on the board on the board sudden.
• 1:13:04
  Now, you know, and to top it all off, all this Dan and Dave hype.
• 1:13:08
  There's more people at the stadium and there's a camera in
• 1:13:12
  your face and you know, I hadn't really experienced that too
• 1:13:14
  much. Sure.
• 1:13:18
  But you know, I'm the kind of guy who just I have a good time
• 1:13:22
  out there, okay? And, and you know, in the pole
• 1:13:25
  vault, as well, is you need the competition to give you a little
• 1:13:30
  extra courage, you need the competition to give you just to,
• 1:13:33
  you know, just just to help you. Let yourself go a little bit
• 1:13:36
  because it's a dangerous event, all right?
• 1:13:38
  And so, you're a little bit of a daredevil, but I remember just
• 1:13:42
  being extremely just scared. It's like, oh my gosh.
• 1:13:45
  And I never was really scared up.
• 1:13:47
  Until that point. And I, you know, I was getting
• 1:13:51
  ready for my third attempt, I start my run and I feel like I
• 1:13:54
  rushed my first couple steps and I was like, woah, woah, calm
• 1:13:56
  down. And I'm telling myself to calm
• 1:13:57
  down and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't take my
• 1:14:00
  mind back to Pullman Washington on a nice sunny day just coach
• 1:14:04
  and I it was just, you know, tunnel vision run down the
• 1:14:09
  runway and I run down the runway and I plant the pole and before
• 1:14:12
  I know it I'm straddled the pole and I don't have a chance to
• 1:14:16
  make the bar and Come down, and I'm going to just in disbelief,
• 1:14:19
  it's like what on Earth happened?
• 1:14:21
  No idea. Just it just happened in a
• 1:14:23
  Flash, third, attempt gone, done, Dave's hugging me.
• 1:14:27
  I just, you know, I pick up my gear, I kind of make my way to
• 1:14:31
  the practice track. I got cameras all over me and I
• 1:14:34
  get over to the practice track and still, it's just like I got
• 1:14:36
  to get away from everybody and I got a massage therapist who had
• 1:14:41
  access to the practice track and he and I just walked a couple
• 1:14:44
  Laps on the track and it was just, I was trying to unravel
• 1:14:46
  what on On Earth just happened and you know, people are you
• 1:14:50
  going to make Olympic team? All come on, man.
• 1:14:51
  You're gonna give you a chance to make the Olympic team is like
• 1:14:53
  no, man. It's done.
• 1:14:54
  So you know, coaches came and got me and it was, you know, but
• 1:14:58
  it was just every Devastation. Oh my gosh, like somebody died.
• 1:15:01
  And so my parent, my coaches got me up into the sky boxes where
• 1:15:05
  Visa was my parents were sitting up there and, you know, some mom
• 1:15:08
  dad had a good cry and my coaches sat down and said, hey,
• 1:15:14
  Here's what we're going to do and I was just like, you know,
• 1:15:17
  we're done, we're done here, you know, let's just so let's watch
• 1:15:21
  the rest and he's like, no, we're going to go out.
• 1:15:24
  We're going to throw the javelin.
• 1:15:25
  We're going to run the 1500. We're going to congratulate
• 1:15:27
  those guys that make that team and I was just like, oh,
• 1:15:30
  brother. Really?
• 1:15:31
  And my coaches like, absolutely. This is what we're doing and so
• 1:15:34
  I was like, okay, you know what? Let's stick to the routine and
• 1:15:37
  so the pole vault got over with, I went to the practice track and
• 1:15:40
  I got ready to throw the javelin.
• 1:15:42
  Had a personal best in the javelin and I probably ran the
• 1:15:44
  easiest for 33 in the 1500 ever. Meet got over, they announced
• 1:15:51
  the winners I do, all the interviews that I need to with,
• 1:15:55
  you know, MBC and everything and and had it not been for my
• 1:15:59
  coaches. I don't go back out there.
• 1:16:02
  I don't go out and finish the decathlon.
• 1:16:04
  I don't go out and, you know, concentrate.
• 1:16:07
  But I do remember being in the javelin and having the weight of
• 1:16:10
  the world off my shoulders. He's at so pressure and it made
• 1:16:14
  me realize this is why I do the sport because I love it, it's
• 1:16:17
  fun, I enjoy it. But if it's not for my coaches,
• 1:16:21
  to take that moment and say no, no no you don't get to decide,
• 1:16:24
  this is what we're doing, that changed a lot of stuff for me,
• 1:16:28
  my perception of them and you know, and it was just like,
• 1:16:31
  thank you. Thank you for forcing me back
• 1:16:33
  out there. You know, I have a lot of
• 1:16:35
  respect for that Dan and for you in the situation, you're in, you
• 1:16:39
  know it's easy for us to be watching TV.
• 1:16:42
  Much in a football game, baseball basketball track and a
• 1:16:45
  great athlete makes a mistake. And it's easy for us to say oh
• 1:16:48
  they choked do I can't believe they would do it.
• 1:16:50
  What a bum? You would never do that in this
• 1:16:52
  situation. First of all, you don't know the
• 1:16:55
  stress and pressures and all the outside things that are going on
• 1:16:58
  but you know, we all know we're all human, right?
• 1:17:00
  Like we all make mistakes. I make mistakes.
• 1:17:03
  I'm just very thankful that a camera is not in my face when I
• 1:17:06
  make my mistake and that everybody's like, oh my God.
• 1:17:09
  You blew this saying, you know, Like me, I thank goodness.
• 1:17:12
  I get to kind of live in my own little bubble for that to be
• 1:17:15
  able to do that in front of. I mean, you talk about the
• 1:17:18
  biggest of audiences. Everybody was watching and to
• 1:17:20
  come back the beginning. You know, I see this theme of
• 1:17:23
  humility and coaching speaking into you.
• 1:17:26
  All right. Well yeah, I understand but
• 1:17:27
  we're going to go to the javelin.
• 1:17:29
  We're going to do the 15. We're going to that.
• 1:17:30
  We're going to go and congratulate, I love that line
• 1:17:32
  and I could see from what I know of Coach Sloan, this being
• 1:17:34
  coach, slow know. Hey, we're going to go and
• 1:17:35
  congratulate those guys, congrats again, and let's move
• 1:17:39
  on, and we're Grant. It's never going to happen
• 1:17:40
  again. Let me tell you that.
• 1:17:42
  So Eric along, you're welcome. Hmm.
• 1:17:45
  A lot of the lot of people do you think's, man.
• 1:17:49
  No. But what was interesting about
• 1:17:50
  that as well is I get back to my hotel room first person that
• 1:17:54
  called me, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Wow.
• 1:17:57
  Yeah. Qian Bob, I don't know how they
• 1:17:59
  got my healthy. Got you know where they knew
• 1:18:01
  where I was staying but I get a call him Bob curse, he's on the
• 1:18:03
  phone and he said Dan Dan this, you know Sports it happens take
• 1:18:08
  your time three lakhs just you know don't do Do anything rash,
• 1:18:12
  okay just you know don't do anything crazy and I was like
• 1:18:15
  Hey thank you very much. And then the next person that
• 1:18:17
  called me was NBC, hey you showed a lot of great
• 1:18:20
  sportsmanship, we'd love for you to come along to Barcelona and
• 1:18:23
  and announce and it was like what is just you know.
• 1:18:26
  It just was one of those things that just, you know, because I
• 1:18:28
  stuck around and did every interesting.
• 1:18:31
  Yeah. And so I, you know, next thing I
• 1:18:33
  know, but I will tell you, it was, it was, it was
• 1:18:35
  heartbreaking. Sure.
• 1:18:37
  I used to have bad dreams, I used to dream that I got call
• 1:18:39
  and say, hey, we need you, you know, it's like, Well, the
• 1:18:42
  Olympic team, you know, but I was, you know, I was dating Tony
• 1:18:45
  Hughes the high jumper at the time from University of Arizona,
• 1:18:47
  she made the Olympic team and I went through processing with her
• 1:18:50
  and so I got to see it all. But I got, you know, the Visa
• 1:18:55
  decathlon team was there for support and people ask me, how
• 1:18:58
  were you able to get older? But how are you able to get over
• 1:19:00
  it? I had the greatest support
• 1:19:02
  system in place. Maybe I didn't realize it at the
• 1:19:04
  time, but I had my two coaches and I had this town, you know,
• 1:19:08
  this town of Moscow, Idaho. And I'll never forget, I get off
• 1:19:11
  the plane. Going home and there's a hundred
• 1:19:13
  people there, you know? And it was like God, he did that
• 1:19:17
  for me. Right?
• 1:19:19
  And they helped me get over that and I was at a golf tournament a
• 1:19:21
  week later. And a little old lady, came up
• 1:19:23
  to me and hug me and, you know, she's like, we still love you,
• 1:19:26
  this is like, well yeah, so I had all the pieces in place to
• 1:19:32
  overcome that adversity, but we got to think back to the Visa
• 1:19:36
  Clinic. I miss the pole vault day.
• 1:19:41
  Alright, so what Came to the conclusion of my coach and I
• 1:19:44
  that was the year that they extended the pits for safety
• 1:19:48
  reasons. Remember it made the pits a
• 1:19:50
  little bit bigger. The front's came out a little
• 1:19:53
  bit farther my timing was off. Yeah that affects it many times
• 1:19:57
  with the new pits and all of a sudden I get the Olympic trials,
• 1:20:00
  I got the extended fronts. My last stride is taking place
• 1:20:03
  almost inside. My perception was just off, but
• 1:20:08
  I'd go back and think if I pull Vault that day at the beach, The
• 1:20:12
  clinic, right? You I win an Olympic gold medal.
• 1:20:15
  Yeah. Make that team and win an
• 1:20:17
  Olympic gold medal and it took me a long time to figure that
• 1:20:19
  out is like what so off that day?
• 1:20:21
  Hmm, you know and people talk about, you know, you're going to
• 1:20:24
  have trouble when you experience things for the very first time
• 1:20:27
  in unknown places and in the for the very first time.
• 1:20:30
  And it's just like, that's why we always try to go someplace
• 1:20:32
  compete on that facility before we went to a championship.
• 1:20:35
  You know, day in this is hard to say to you being who I am and
• 1:20:38
  who you are and what you've done.
• 1:20:40
  But it's interesting. You said that If I would have
• 1:20:43
  been able to pole vault, that day during the camp, you know,
• 1:20:46
  maybe I could have won the gold medal etcetera.
• 1:20:47
  You know, I truly believe that it's weird to say this because
• 1:20:51
  there's a lot of things that have to go in for you to believe
• 1:20:53
  these kind of this kind of saying here.
• 1:20:54
  But you know, things happen for a reason and it's easy for us.
• 1:20:58
  We do it a lot. It's human nature to think back,
• 1:21:00
  like, oh man, if I wouldn't have done this out of gone on and
• 1:21:03
  become CEO. We also, I think forget that if
• 1:21:07
  we if this would happen, bad things could have been in the
• 1:21:10
  future to you know, maybe EU do vault at that camp and you get,
• 1:21:14
  you understand the new pit selection and you go to the
• 1:21:17
  Olympic trials that year and you make the team and win the gold
• 1:21:19
  medal, and then never make another Olympic team.
• 1:21:23
  Sure. That's pop.
• 1:21:24
  That's a possibility. The possibility that you still
• 1:21:26
  don't make the team at the 90. To 100 trials, is still there as
• 1:21:29
  well, you know, so I know it's hard and again, it's hard for me
• 1:21:31
  to say this to you Dan, because you've lived it, you live the
• 1:21:33
  heartache, and the crescendo on the mountain, my friend.
• 1:21:36
  But, you know, I think things happen for a reason.
• 1:21:38
  I think you are who you are. I don't think this, I know you.
• 1:21:42
  Who you are today because of who you were, the things that
• 1:21:44
  experiences that you had that happen to you.
• 1:21:45
  You had to have those experiences to be who you are
• 1:21:47
  today. And it's really weird to say
• 1:21:49
  this and I'm not sure anybody's ever told you this, but maybe
• 1:21:52
  they have. I'm glad they happen to you
• 1:21:54
  because we get who we are today. 20:23 Dan?
• 1:21:57
  Who I love and adore, and thank God, we have him who you are
• 1:22:00
  today, based on the things that happen to you in the past man,
• 1:22:04
  Nat failure, dead failure. Absolutely shaped me it.
• 1:22:07
  If you know, I look back on my career and see all the successes
• 1:22:10
  I had, you know, What, I don't remember, you know, it's falling
• 1:22:16
  back on those successes and having those success has really
• 1:22:19
  helped me, you know, just a few of them maybe.
• 1:22:22
  But I look back on the failure and think about what a
• 1:22:25
  motivating factor, that was what I did in the changes I made in
• 1:22:28
  the athlete. I became after that.
• 1:22:30
  And so, you know, I talked about how that was.
• 1:22:32
  So, you know, how that changed everything for me, from a
• 1:22:35
  coaching, standpoint my relationship with my coaches up
• 1:22:37
  until that point. I was the young good athlete.
• 1:22:41
  Who Did exactly what their coaches told him to.
• 1:22:44
  But after that moment, I made a point to take, you know, I made
• 1:22:49
  it my personal responsibility to be to be responsible for my
• 1:22:53
  successes and failures. All right, and Coach loan, even
• 1:22:56
  says after 92. Now, we had a be plan as see,
• 1:23:00
  plan, a deep link, got a heavy wind, you know, what am I going
• 1:23:03
  to do in a heavy wind? What am I going to do in a rain?
• 1:23:05
  What I'm going to do on a hot day, cold day, you know, I added
• 1:23:08
  a few more poles to my bag. And I was, I was just more
• 1:23:12
  prepared. I'm much more prepared.
• 1:23:14
  Athlete, but I also, because of that, I matured a lot, I can't
• 1:23:17
  get through it and I was just a tougher athlete.
• 1:23:22
  Absolutely. And so, I mean, even Harry and
• 1:23:24
  Ed Miller, and guys like that go, oh no, because, you know,
• 1:23:27
  they saw what happened in 92. And so when I showed up in 1993,
• 1:23:30
  94, 95, they're just like, we're getting, we're getting that.
• 1:23:33
  We're getting the angry Daniel Bryan here.
• 1:23:37
  He's, you know, he's not gonna, he's not going to lose.
• 1:23:40
  Um, so yeah. That was the real.
• 1:23:42
  That was such a such a learning experience for me.
• 1:23:45
  But again, it goes back to the coaches and it's like, you know,
• 1:23:48
  I just appreciate them for putting me in that position to
• 1:23:52
  have such a learning moment, right?
• 1:23:54
  Love it. Hey, for the sake of time, let's
• 1:23:57
  fast forward here. So, we talked about the, I don't
• 1:24:01
  know, I kind of don't want to call it the big - 92, but I
• 1:24:03
  mean, obviously, what happened happened?
• 1:24:05
  You going to 96 that went? Well, you win the gold medal.
• 1:24:09
  You know, you did. Exactly what you set out.
• 1:24:12
  You were going to do you. You hit the top of the mountain.
• 1:24:15
  What do you do? What does a guy like you do?
• 1:24:18
  When it's all done, when you decided I'm hanging up, all ten
• 1:24:22
  pairs of shoes. What do you go on to be talk to
• 1:24:26
  us about post Athletics now. So I think one of the saddest
• 1:24:30
  days for me, was the day after I won the gold medal.
• 1:24:33
  Okay, wake up. You know what?
• 1:24:35
  So I win the gold medal and Michael Johnson died.
• 1:24:38
  We have the same agent. We do a big you know, we do a
• 1:24:40
  big party at Planet Hollywood and were up till 4:00 in the
• 1:24:43
  morning and I go to bed and I wake up and there's the metal on
• 1:24:47
  the bed stand next to me, And I thought, man, I got the gold
• 1:24:51
  medal, but I was depressed because I wasn't different.
• 1:24:55
  I thought you know, I'm gonna win this gold medal, and I'm
• 1:24:57
  just going to feel different. It's, I'm putting everything
• 1:25:01
  into this, man. When this happens, my life's
• 1:25:04
  going to just be perfect, right? You know, the stars are going to
• 1:25:07
  line up or whatever, but I didn't feel any different.
• 1:25:10
  And so, I was a little bit of a letdown and not only that, my
• 1:25:14
  goal was gone. Mmm.
• 1:25:17
  That I woke up for every single day that Thing that got me out
• 1:25:19
  of bed, the thing that drove me in the thing that I went to bed,
• 1:25:22
  early for and the thing I'd lay in bed at night and stare at the
• 1:25:25
  ceiling and think about it was kind of done and it's just like,
• 1:25:30
  oh wow, what do you do now? And you know, I you know, I you
• 1:25:35
  know, went to the winter, the Wheaties breakfast and you know,
• 1:25:37
  got to, you know, got to be introduced with, you know, Bruce
• 1:25:40
  Jenner and Bob Matthias in those guys and went on the lunch
• 1:25:43
  circuit. You know, for about six months
• 1:25:46
  But I didn't have a plan. Hmm.
• 1:25:49
  And I think that was maybe my biggest mistake is that I just I
• 1:25:52
  just didn't have a plan. You know, what are you gonna do
• 1:25:53
  afterwards? You know, Bruce Jenner said, he
• 1:25:55
  was lucky when the golden got to talk about it for the rest of
• 1:25:57
  his life right to me maybe. But you know if you think back
• 1:26:03
  on 76, you know how many Olympic athletes do we really Revere and
• 1:26:07
  remember and it's a handful but you know, here we are in the
• 1:26:10
  modern day and it's just like God we're a dozen stars that
• 1:26:13
  came out of the 96 Olympics. You know.
• 1:26:15
  Not just in track and field. Field.
• 1:26:16
  But in other sports as well and but I still had a love for the
• 1:26:21
  sport of track and field and I felt young enough.
• 1:26:23
  And again I didn't have all that mileage on me and early part of
• 1:26:26
  my career that I thought I could compete again.
• 1:26:29
  But I got started with a 97 Year too late, so I just wasn't able
• 1:26:34
  to I wasn't able to go to the US championships, but that year
• 1:26:37
  because I didn't go to the US championships.
• 1:26:40
  We pressed my agent and I along with the Federation pressed to
• 1:26:43
  get returning world champions. An automatic bid into the world
• 1:26:48
  championships. And so that was the Earth at
• 1:26:50
  that came about. I came back in 1998, had a nice
• 1:26:55
  full season my coaches at that point I think they had had
• 1:26:59
  enough of each other you know? And we stayed in their Lane long
• 1:27:02
  enough and after the 96 games coach Keller's like, hey just
• 1:27:06
  come train with me and Coach Sloan said, no.
• 1:27:08
  But let's just come train with me and so I had to make a
• 1:27:10
  decision and I ended up staying it up just staying in training
• 1:27:13
  with Coach Sloan coach. Keller was moving out of town.
• 1:27:15
  He And two, he wanted to get out of Moscow, Idaho.
• 1:27:18
  So I didn't travel with him. So you know there were some
• 1:27:20
  changes but I didn't have a plan and I think the toughest thing
• 1:27:23
  for me to do was to be done being an athlete, I win the
• 1:27:27
  Goodwill games in 98, you know? And I think, well, you know
• 1:27:31
  what, I'm going to make another Olympic team in 2000 but I
• 1:27:33
  ruptured my planner just weeks weeks prior to the trials.
• 1:27:37
  And then I think, you know what 2000 form of the oldest guy ever
• 1:27:40
  to make a track and field Olympic team, you know, and just
• 1:27:42
  injured. Just weird stuff happened and I
• 1:27:45
  moved down to are Ona in 2000 and I was just, I was training
• 1:27:50
  at weight. I was training at Arizona State
• 1:27:52
  University with a handful of post-collegiate, guys.
• 1:27:55
  And I just enjoyed, I wanted to get out of the cold weather.
• 1:27:59
  The cold weather was just beating me up in the Palouse
• 1:28:01
  and, and I, you know, met a girl.
• 1:28:03
  She didn't want to stay in Idaho.
• 1:28:04
  So it's like, you know, we moved down to move down to Arizona and
• 1:28:07
  then I moved down, Arizona full-time in 2002, but I always
• 1:28:11
  thought, like, when I was messing around in school and,
• 1:28:15
  you know, ineligible I just thought, you know, if I can put
• 1:28:17
  a good year together, I'll be able to get back out there and
• 1:28:19
  compete and I tried for a long time.
• 1:28:22
  I just didn't want to give it up.
• 1:28:23
  I was the Brett Favre of track and field is like, look,
• 1:28:26
  somebody have to drag me off that track and it took a long
• 1:28:29
  time. Hmm.
• 1:28:30
  I finished my book and it got published in 2012 and honestly
• 1:28:36
  until I wrote the Final Chapter that book I thought I was an
• 1:28:40
  athlete. I thought I was a track and
• 1:28:42
  field athlete that took needed a high level, but when I finished
• 1:28:45
  that book it was very Cathartic in the fact is now my athletic
• 1:28:49
  career is over. I can put track and field behind
• 1:28:52
  me and there was a period in the 2000s that I you know, didn't go
• 1:28:56
  around the sport, you know. It made me sad it's like I'm not
• 1:29:00
  out there competing and I just you know, what can I contribute?
• 1:29:03
  And then it was it was it was guys who I competed against and
• 1:29:05
  with that got me back out there, Steve threats at Kansas State
• 1:29:09
  and Chris Huffman's was when he was at Cal and I'm seeing all
• 1:29:12
  these guys coaching at high levels and he was young, guys,
• 1:29:15
  you know, Jamie Cook. And guys, who came to my high
• 1:29:17
  school championships, you know, guys like that, that I thought,
• 1:29:22
  that's where I belong. And so I, you know, I took a
• 1:29:26
  volunteer position at Arizona State University, they had a
• 1:29:29
  great decathlete, he was, you know, second at the back, tens,
• 1:29:32
  a couple of times, and then I got to work with Jackie Johnson.
• 1:29:35
  Hmm. I'm NCAA Champion.
• 1:29:38
  She's pretty good. Yeah, and she's got a great
• 1:29:42
  story to, you know, she came to ASU on a basketball scholarship
• 1:29:45
  Wednesday. And heptathlon for four years in
• 1:29:48
  a row, but I, you know, one of the greatest Thrills of my life
• 1:29:51
  was to help her make the 2008 Olympic team.
• 1:29:53
  Hmm. And you know what's interesting
• 1:29:56
  is, I mean she was different than I was.
• 1:29:58
  She ransacked and she was five years old everything and so she
• 1:30:02
  did one year post-collegiate. And she said to me, she's like,
• 1:30:05
  I think I'm done. And I was like what?
• 1:30:07
  You're the best kept athlete in the country?
• 1:30:09
  You know, you got to be, you know, you got to be high lease,
• 1:30:11
  but I lease is on her way out. You could be the next and she's
• 1:30:14
  just like, nope. I think I've had enough.
• 1:30:16
  And it was just like, wow and she went and worked for
• 1:30:18
  University of Phoenix and never looked back.
• 1:30:21
  And I really respected that about her, but somebody who I
• 1:30:23
  really respect as a post Collegiate athlete is Michael
• 1:30:27
  Johnson. Hmm, he had a plan.
• 1:30:30
  When he stepped away from the track, what exactly he was going
• 1:30:32
  to do. He did it with a purpose.
• 1:30:34
  He went to another Olympics because it set him up for his
• 1:30:37
  plan afterwards and you know if you he's a guy who's you know a
• 1:30:41
  little easily a year younger than I am but it's somebody I
• 1:30:44
  look at and think what a great mentor you know.
• 1:30:46
  Michael has been just for this is how you do it.
• 1:30:50
  High-level you step away and you you know you have a plan for it.
• 1:30:54
  It took me a long time and I've had to kind of ReDiscover myself
• 1:30:58
  dozens of times. But you know the thing that
• 1:31:01
  keeps coming back to me is I love the sport of track and
• 1:31:04
  field and I want to figure out how do I make a difference?
• 1:31:07
  You know. And recently I've been talking
• 1:31:08
  to Richmond know and, and, and John godina.
• 1:31:11
  It's like, how do we put on more meets?
• 1:31:13
  How do we, you know, how do we enhance the track?
• 1:31:15
  It feel Track and field experience.
• 1:31:17
  And so for me to get called up into the broadcast Booth, you
• 1:31:20
  know I'm honored to talk about running athletes in the
• 1:31:22
  Collegiate ranks and then, you know, don't, you know, I get a
• 1:31:25
  chance to, you know, announce the US championships.
• 1:31:27
  I was at the World Championships last year on the mic.
• 1:31:29
  So it's, you know, I'm there in the sport and as much as I try
• 1:31:34
  to go off away from the sport and you know, find my pot of
• 1:31:37
  gold. It's just like no man.
• 1:31:39
  The the my pot of gold in the sport and one of the annual
• 1:31:42
  meeting and just sitting with people like yourself and You
• 1:31:46
  know, getting to talk to, you know, Kevin read and you know
• 1:31:49
  Glen septic and guys like that is this something that's that's
• 1:31:52
  where my love is. I'm curious Danny, mentioned the
• 1:31:54
  book, and if you're on YouTube, you can see the book.
• 1:31:57
  If you're not, you just Google first of all, Google, Dan
• 1:31:59
  O'Brien book, actually, that's probably not a great thing to.
• 1:32:01
  Google is probably a thousand books with your name on it but
• 1:32:03
  the name of the book is clearing hurdles the quest to be the
• 1:32:06
  world's greatest athlete. I'm curious Danny, you mentioned
• 1:32:12
  above probably paraphrase here, a little bit.
• 1:32:13
  You said I until I wrote the last Last chapter of this book.
• 1:32:17
  I still felt like I was an athlete and I can it's hard for
• 1:32:21
  you to imagine because I've never been an athlete anywhere
• 1:32:23
  close to what you were in probably still are how do you as
• 1:32:30
  an athlete that high? How do you prepare for that last
• 1:32:35
  race? Do you know, it's your last
• 1:32:36
  competition? Do you call your coaches?
• 1:32:40
  Are you talking your coaches? Like, hey, man.
• 1:32:41
  Let's this decathlon. Or hammer do this hurdle race at
• 1:32:44
  this milrose? Or But this is going to be.
• 1:32:47
  I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to proverbial put my shoes now
• 1:32:49
  at the Finish Line when it's over and I'm done.
• 1:32:51
  How do you actually? It seems hold on.
• 1:32:54
  I'm gonna stumble over this here, a little dance.
• 1:32:56
  They with me, though. So when Fred Dixon, when he was
• 1:32:59
  working to retire here, he was working and he's going to
• 1:33:01
  retire. It was extremely hard for him,
• 1:33:04
  and I can understand it because it's not something, there's no
• 1:33:07
  class you take on how to retire. There's no lessons that there's
• 1:33:10
  plenty of Articles and stuff, but until you are faced with on
• 1:33:14
  Friday, it's going to be my last day of A job.
• 1:33:16
  He worked here for 20, something years Friday is gonna be my last
• 1:33:19
  day Monday. I'm going to wake up and I'm not
• 1:33:20
  going to call them a customer or answer email.
• 1:33:23
  I'm just, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
• 1:33:25
  I can only imagine has to be similar on the athletic side of.
• 1:33:29
  Hey, after this Competition, winner, lose draw false, start
• 1:33:34
  on Monday. I'm going to wake up and I'm not
• 1:33:36
  going to compete anymore. How do you do that?
• 1:33:38
  Who do you talk to? How do you process that to be
• 1:33:42
  ready? If you can even be ready for it?
• 1:33:44
  You know, I never put myself in that situation.
• 1:33:47
  I mean, even just thinking about it that way and talking about
• 1:33:50
  it, it saddens me. And I just, I think, what could
• 1:33:53
  it? Could I have done that and I
• 1:33:54
  just, I just, I just never did. I just me retiring?
• 1:34:00
  Hit me in the face. I went to the 2002, say that
• 1:34:05
  2002 US championships at Cal. So they had the US championships
• 1:34:11
  were at Stanford but they had the multis that cow.
• 1:34:14
  And so I said, you know what? In 2001.
• 1:34:16
  Sorry, so 2001. So what was the world
• 1:34:18
  championship here? Okay.
• 1:34:21
  And Bryan, clay, was competing Tom Pappas.
• 1:34:23
  You know, some of the young guys, Travis effort and you
• 1:34:28
  know, I ran well in the 100 meters and then in the long jump
• 1:34:31
  by long jump like 720 on the 25 foot long jumper better and I
• 1:34:37
  thought, look on the day, I can step up and get it done, it just
• 1:34:42
  didn't come to me that day. It honestly didn't my shop put
• 1:34:45
  was a struggle and then, you know, I didn't have great
• 1:34:47
  training season. I competed here and there with
• 1:34:49
  Coach Sloan and we travel to some meats and stuff, but that
• 1:34:52
  hit me like just a ton of bricks and you know what?
• 1:34:55
  I didn't finish that decathlon and I walk away from their just
• 1:34:58
  thinking, golly am I done? So it was it was it was a little
• 1:35:01
  depressing from that standpoint but I kept again it's just like,
• 1:35:04
  no no man I just any more time and you know, then if some knee
• 1:35:08
  trouble and some hip trouble and you know, some different things
• 1:35:10
  like that, I just never put myself in the finality of doing
• 1:35:13
  that. And I probably should have, but
• 1:35:17
  I was also the kind of guy that just I was a bad plan or you
• 1:35:20
  know then and I'm you know, kind of a bad planner now.
• 1:35:22
  Just like, I'm going to wait to see the next good thing that
• 1:35:25
  comes along. And you know, if you don't plan
• 1:35:28
  on sometimes a good thing doesn't come along.
• 1:35:30
  I've been fortunate enough to fall into some things but you
• 1:35:33
  know, my I never had that plan and I think not getting my
• 1:35:37
  degree and and kind of having something to fall back on.
• 1:35:40
  You know was was something that really hurt me.
• 1:35:44
  You know, even when I was a volunteer assistant at Arizona
• 1:35:46
  State University of Mentor, who I have, who is just been so good
• 1:35:51
  to me a Steve Miller, okay, you know, former former head of Nike
• 1:35:55
  running now, he runs Andre Agassi and his foundation and
• 1:35:58
  everything is in Las Vegas, and Steve.
• 1:36:00
  Finally said one day's. It look if you're gonna coach
• 1:36:04
  get a job in coach. All right.
• 1:36:06
  Right now you're just being a volunteer assistant and I used
• 1:36:08
  to just come home from you know the NCAA championships and just
• 1:36:11
  go out what a waste of time was a volunteer.
• 1:36:14
  You know, I helped the team but you know I wasn't getting paid
• 1:36:16
  for it and you do it long enough and you start to resent it a
• 1:36:20
  little bit, as a volunteer and Steve's.
• 1:36:22
  Like look going to coaching and get a job or don't.
• 1:36:26
  And so I just called coach craft as it looked at my last season
• 1:36:29
  volunteer. And we had a cry and, you know,
• 1:36:31
  we've been really good friends ever since he's like, look, you
• 1:36:33
  need to go do your announcing? You need to go, you know, video
• 1:36:36
  if it's high level coaching someplace, if it's pursuing
• 1:36:39
  other opportunities. And so, you know, somebody like
• 1:36:42
  great craft telling that to me, You know, means a lot as well.
• 1:36:45
  It's like, I've got a fantastic coach for so many years and, you
• 1:36:49
  know, people have been telling me that for a while, but I
• 1:36:51
  remember when I had a chance in 2000, no, excuse me. 2004, you
• 1:36:57
  know, NBC calls and says, look, we want you to broadcast and I
• 1:37:00
  said, alright, give me a contract and yeah, we don't do
• 1:37:03
  that, you know, we, you get paid per event.
• 1:37:06
  We want to try out this year and I said, look, I've got to make
• 1:37:08
  it worth my while. Okay, look, give me a contract.
• 1:37:11
  I'll step away from the sport and they didn't.
• 1:37:13
  So I said nah man. When somebody wants to give me a
• 1:37:16
  gold medal, somebody wants to pay me to go to the Olympics
• 1:37:18
  and, you know, I wanted to be back on top and I should have
• 1:37:22
  stopped and said no no look, I got to start planning for my
• 1:37:24
  future, take that job with NBC, who knows?
• 1:37:27
  I might have still been with NBC you know this day.
• 1:37:31
  But that was the that you know, that's a that's a regret that
• 1:37:33
  kind of came and, you know, went but I didn't have the finality
• 1:37:37
  of it and it was difficult but at see what it was really
• 1:37:39
  something difficult to write that book but When I finished
• 1:37:44
  it, my wife even said, wow, you look relieved.
• 1:37:49
  It was a hard to put on the chapter was really, really hard.
• 1:37:51
  It's talks about, you know, where I am currently in my life
• 1:37:54
  at that time and good friend of mine.
• 1:37:56
  He and I wrote the book together and, you know, we put it down
• 1:37:58
  and it was just like, oh God cheese.
• 1:38:00
  Now I'm done pursuing the gold medal that kind of your
• 1:38:05
  Catholicism of all. Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
• 1:38:10
  So tell us about the announcing I thought was interesting Ting,
• 1:38:13
  you talked about in 92 and you didn't make the team.
• 1:38:15
  And an embassy was like, well, we want you to come and be
• 1:38:16
  behind the mic. I thought that was like, oh,
• 1:38:18
  wait a minute. See, look how that kind of set
• 1:38:19
  you up in the future as well. You know, Dan, you might be.
• 1:38:24
  I have a lot of respect for the people that are behind the mic.
• 1:38:27
  The Dwight Stones, you know, Carl's sister.
• 1:38:30
  Why is her name is escaping me? Sheesh funeral.
• 1:38:32
  She did it for a while. And, you know, unequivocally,
• 1:38:36
  100% of time you get bashed, you can't do it, right?
• 1:38:40
  No announcer. Has ever gotten it, right?
• 1:38:41
  I'm sorry. They just, they Everybody's
• 1:38:43
  terrible air quotes there. I've never seen that about you
• 1:38:47
  and you do a fantastic job. I don't know what means the
• 1:38:49
  decathlon. So you quote unquote know every
• 1:38:51
  event so you can speak into it. But as I got kind of behind the
• 1:38:55
  scenes a little bit I got to learn what the on the field
• 1:38:57
  personalities are for these track meets and and the
• 1:39:00
  announcers. And oh my goodness, trust me.
• 1:39:03
  If you think they're doing a bad job, you try it because this is
• 1:39:06
  not easy to do on the fly with all these different events, all
• 1:39:09
  these different people, all the different background stories
• 1:39:12
  that you've got to be ready. To go on the live broadcast
• 1:39:16
  faster than a snap of a finger for crying out loud.
• 1:39:18
  Talk to us a bit. Little bit about that process.
• 1:39:20
  Kind of give us a behind the curtain.
• 1:39:22
  Look at what goes on there so you know who makes me look.
• 1:39:24
  Good is Rich monoi. Hmm.
• 1:39:27
  So who am I right? And I'm at the NCAA
• 1:39:31
  championships. He writes on a piece of paper,
• 1:39:34
  men's long jump hands. It to me first place.
• 1:39:38
  Second place, third place, first video, second video, second,
• 1:39:41
  third clip. And he goes, we go over it real
• 1:39:44
  quick and he's like this guy was last year's champion, this guy
• 1:39:47
  was third at the SEC me. Boom, boom!
• 1:39:49
  He says all the stats up for me and then he hands it to me.
• 1:39:52
  And then the the video comes up and I was like him in the men's
• 1:39:54
  long Jack. Boom.
• 1:39:55
  And it says, like, thank you Rich, but you need people like
• 1:39:58
  that. Yeah, it's Walter Murphy.
• 1:40:01
  It's, you know, it's just, there's so many people behind
• 1:40:05
  the scenes that are filming, those individual efforts in the
• 1:40:09
  field events. And then, even when it comes
• 1:40:12
  time to, To Tom Lewis is a guy who gives you know gives me the
• 1:40:16
  races sheet by sheet, you know, he 160 m, you know, 60 M
• 1:40:20
  prelims. Boom, boom.
• 1:40:21
  I got all the lanes. What school?
• 1:40:23
  Everybody's from and their best achievement of the year or the
• 1:40:25
  fastest time of the year, their best overall career achievement.
• 1:40:28
  You need people like that in his announcer.
• 1:40:30
  You can't do it all yourself. Right there are needs for you.
• 1:40:32
  Have to do it yourself but you can't do it for a big SEC or an
• 1:40:36
  NCAA meat or a US Championship. You got to have people that do
• 1:40:39
  that but this is crazy. I go to Barcelona.
• 1:40:43
  In 1992 for the Olympic Games. My broadcast partners are Tom
• 1:40:49
  Hammond. Of course, and OJ Simpson here.
• 1:40:55
  Yeah. Oh, Jay Simpson.
• 1:40:58
  What was that song Memories? I've had a few.
• 1:41:01
  Oh, that's okay, don't worry. Oh my God.
• 1:41:04
  Lon and Controversy in the men's decathlon shot.
• 1:41:09
  Put Dave, Johnson had a third foul in the shop like he
• 1:41:13
  protested for 20 minutes. They gave him a fourth row and
• 1:41:16
  he threw a personal best. And so we're going through it in
• 1:41:19
  the broadcast booth and I said, you know, Dave Johnson got
• 1:41:22
  really, really lucky on that one.
• 1:41:24
  You know, it looks to me like that.
• 1:41:25
  Third one was a foul as foot was up on the toe board, he's saying
• 1:41:28
  it was on the side and we saw it a hundred different ways and he
• 1:41:31
  got it. You know, he comes back and he
• 1:41:32
  wins the bronze medal. I get back to the hotel and
• 1:41:36
  Dave's wife Sherry. They are you a hater?
• 1:41:38
  Yeah. Oh man, I was thinking yeah just
• 1:41:40
  supporting Dave and I was just like, oh my gosh I'm just and we
• 1:41:43
  and you know and in the van for NBC it's like call it like you
• 1:41:47
  see. See it, you know in no no no, no
• 1:41:51
  small talk, you know, be loud. Say it like it is and so you're
• 1:41:55
  right. Everybody is not going to be
• 1:41:56
  happy but the greatest I think the greatest critique I ever
• 1:42:00
  got. Was the boys over at let's run.
• 1:42:02
  Hmm, Daniel Bryan, at least he said they said in the distance
• 1:42:06
  running at least Daniel Bryan knows what he doesn't know and
• 1:42:09
  he doesn't go any farther and it's just like oh that's pretty
• 1:42:12
  good. I guess instead of being up
• 1:42:14
  there and talking about a bunch of stuff, you don't know, you
• 1:42:16
  know? And that's the thing I people.
• 1:42:18
  Tell me it's like, look, we don't need all that talking in a
• 1:42:20
  distance race that it up and let us watch distance running and
• 1:42:24
  that's what distant and it's like, okay, you got it, you got
• 1:42:26
  it, you know, Dwight and I kind of go through the distance races
• 1:42:29
  like that and just give the pertinent information, you know
• 1:42:32
  what? And when it comes to Tech, you
• 1:42:34
  know, when it comes to strategy and stuff, none of those coaches
• 1:42:37
  want to give you their strategies.
• 1:42:39
  Hmm. I talked to coaches till I'm
• 1:42:41
  blue in the face and those distance Runners.
• 1:42:43
  You know, a Dan at Alabama is not going to tell me right now.
• 1:42:48
  How is 1500 meter Runner is going to is going to run that
• 1:42:51
  race. So it's just like well in the
• 1:42:53
  last race he did this you know and just have to let those races
• 1:42:56
  go out. But I mean II really enjoy the
• 1:42:58
  broadcasting and what I think I like about it, best about it is
• 1:43:02
  like a race. It's like you training.
• 1:43:04
  You have to be prepared with a shilling and if you're not that
• 1:43:07
  comes through certainly as well. I enjoy International
• 1:43:11
  broadcasting a little bit more because it's a little bit more
• 1:43:15
  free form, you're on air for longer.
• 1:43:18
  The time you don't take as many commercials and so you're having
• 1:43:21
  just these super long conversations.
• 1:43:23
  American television is very structured, a, we're going to
• 1:43:25
  kind of come out of commercial or going to show.
• 1:43:27
  X Y and Z. We're going to go to commercial
• 1:43:28
  lot of commercials and in u.s. u.s. broadcasting but you
• 1:43:32
  mentioned some names and I mentioned Sycamore, you
• 1:43:34
  mentioned Rich monoi. If you're listening now and you
• 1:43:36
  want to know who in the world is Rich monoi.
• 1:43:37
  He actually was a guest about a month ago at this point.
• 1:43:40
  He is the owner vs athletic so you got to go check him out to
• 1:43:44
  other people that I thought do a pretty good job too and they're
• 1:43:47
  in your vein. Of competitions tree does a
• 1:43:50
  pretty good job. I've got you know no one were
• 1:43:52
  you know Trace from Alabama like me so we can be excused the not
• 1:43:56
  know some things but trade does a phenomenal Job saying you
• 1:43:58
  richards-ross is another person I thought who does a good job
• 1:44:02
  before we come off of the announcing though I do have to
• 1:44:05
  ask the question. It gets asked a lot.
• 1:44:08
  I don't know that anybody's ever given an answer.
• 1:44:10
  Why in the world? Do you go to an athlete?
• 1:44:13
  Almost as soon as their first foot comes across the finish
• 1:44:16
  line and start asking questions. Well, that's a good question.
• 1:44:20
  But I think the answer is you've lost your moment if you wait
• 1:44:27
  till the next commercial break and bring them back, it's really
• 1:44:30
  difficult. And and this is something that
• 1:44:32
  they've tried to do as well. It's like wait till they're wait
• 1:44:35
  till they stop breathing and then do the interview and then
• 1:44:38
  put the recorded interview, you know, back in and at a later
• 1:44:43
  recording. And so, I think what's really
• 1:44:45
  happening now is to save money and Broadcasting.
• 1:44:49
  Anything's live to tape, okay, used to be a, we can do it all
• 1:44:52
  to tape and then they can edit it and it said it just takes way
• 1:44:54
  too long, so they got to do it now.
• 1:44:56
  And I honestly it's like as an athlete, you like you're huffing
• 1:44:59
  and puffing. There's no better time than
• 1:45:02
  getting that athletes perspective but and, you know,
• 1:45:05
  maybe we maybe, you know, we haven't learned our lesson from
• 1:45:08
  boxers, but track and field athletes know to expect it but
• 1:45:12
  you know, some of them are just like look, atthe Animo.
• 1:45:15
  I'm not ready yet, I'm not ready yet.
• 1:45:17
  And if you've just broken a record, You ran really well.
• 1:45:20
  You know what? If we got to go to a field of n,
• 1:45:22
  if we got to go to a race and then come back to you
• 1:45:23
  afterwards, you're going to get, you're going to get, you're
• 1:45:26
  going to get you. I just had to ask.
• 1:45:28
  There's been just some fun. He's like, man, just for a
• 1:45:29
  person, can't talk rightfully. So they can't talk.
• 1:45:32
  Oh my goodness! Hey Dan.
• 1:45:33
  So we're scheduled for just a few more minutes.
• 1:45:35
  If you're good, we can keep going.
• 1:45:37
  I'm good. I want to be realistic.
• 1:45:38
  Let's keep trudging away. I'm digging this.
• 1:45:41
  So we're kind of in the last stage here.
• 1:45:43
  Tell me what are you doing today?
• 1:45:46
  You know, everybody wants to know where in the world is Dan
• 1:45:47
  O'Brien. What do you work?
• 1:45:49
  On today. So of course you'll see me at a
• 1:45:51
  handful of track and field gigs on on ESPN and and you know
• 1:45:55
  doing work at the US championships.
• 1:45:57
  I'm still you know still doing great work with USA Track and
• 1:46:00
  Field indoors and Outdoors. Adams makes my guy over there,
• 1:46:03
  but he's good. So when I first moved to Arizona
• 1:46:05
  about 20 years ago, I met a gentleman who had a dream of
• 1:46:09
  building a large Sports Park. All right, he had two kids at
• 1:46:12
  play club sports and they were all over the valley in the
• 1:46:14
  valley of Phoenix here. You know, he had a son that
• 1:46:16
  played basketball and was on one side of town.
• 1:46:19
  Some of the play baseball other side.
• 1:46:20
  Mom was taken to, you know, you know club, sports is just crazy,
• 1:46:23
  crazy. Chris softens even said, you
• 1:46:26
  know, kudos to those Club parents.
• 1:46:27
  It's a man but his dream was, why isn't there everything?
• 1:46:31
  Why isn't everything just Under One Roof?
• 1:46:34
  And it's like, you know, it's kind of interesting why the
• 1:46:37
  baseball facilities are basketball facilities.
• 1:46:39
  There's, you know, we have football fields like somebody
• 1:46:42
  needs to build a park that has it all, and so Disney Wide World
• 1:46:45
  of Sports, Disney World, Wide World of Sports, you know, was
• 1:46:47
  built and that I Idea of bringing all those club sports
• 1:46:51
  together was born, but nobody figured it out, you know, how to
• 1:46:55
  do it, as well as Disney but here, Randy Miller is his name,
• 1:46:59
  he's the founder of Legacy Sports USA.
• 1:47:02
  You know, I was training his two sons and he got me interested in
• 1:47:05
  the idea of this large Sports Park.
• 1:47:07
  And for years, he tried to get a bill.
• 1:47:08
  He tried to find the guy to fund it to build it.
• 1:47:11
  But over the years it also grew it started out.
• 1:47:13
  It was just 50 acres, you know. It was and then it was 100.
• 1:47:15
  It was 150 acres but in 2018, Um, we got funded to build a 320
• 1:47:21
  Acres. Sports Park in East Mesa, 320
• 1:47:24
  Acres, 24 soccer fields, and you want large soccer venues.
• 1:47:30
  So that all when you have large soccer tournament, you can play
• 1:47:33
  them all in one spot before this facility.
• 1:47:35
  You were, you know, we had kids in Peoria and Glendale and
• 1:47:38
  Scottsdale and Tempe at five different locations to hold one
• 1:47:42
  tournament. And you know, there are some
• 1:47:45
  large Sports Parks popping up around the country, but we
• 1:47:48
  opened our doors. Bout a year ago and so Legacy,
• 1:47:51
  Sports USA, the facility now got title sponsorship called Bell
• 1:47:55
  Bank Park and I have been part of the project for years but I
• 1:48:00
  oversee the performance training center and this was a
• 1:48:03
  phenomenal. It's it looks like a division.
• 1:48:05
  One weight room. It's 25,000 square feet.
• 1:48:08
  I got 80 yards of turf, I got, you know, I've got three.
• 1:48:12
  I got three lanes of track in here and, you know, they didn't
• 1:48:14
  build me an indoor track, but at least got my straightaways and,
• 1:48:17
  you know, can have some people To come out of blocks and run
• 1:48:20
  some straightaways and hurdles. So that's really been my focus.
• 1:48:23
  The last three years. You know, I was designed in this
• 1:48:27
  place, you know, five and six years ago as well but now that
• 1:48:30
  we got it open, you know. Now it's now we got to keep it
• 1:48:33
  full. The fun part of the job is over
• 1:48:36
  now. It's now it's the harder.
• 1:48:38
  You know, how do we get people in here out and keep me full,
• 1:48:40
  but the goal is to build more locations.
• 1:48:43
  Hmm. Big locations where in
• 1:48:45
  Communications with people in McKinney Texas.
• 1:48:47
  And, and Murfreesboro Tennessee. So you never know.
• 1:48:51
  We might see, might see some facilities in those locations,
• 1:48:54
  but that's what I would like to do is move on to the other
• 1:48:57
  locations and help design and and and create places where, you
• 1:49:01
  know, people can drain and you know brick and mortar kind of
• 1:49:03
  suffered a little bit through covid but man when they came
• 1:49:06
  out, everybody wanted to get back in the gym and that's what
• 1:49:08
  we do here. We do Performance training for
• 1:49:10
  athletes and non-athletes alike. So athletes wise, is it like
• 1:49:15
  local, high school and Collegiate athletes,
• 1:49:17
  professional athletes of the Of all.
• 1:49:20
  Yeah, so we train, we train Youth and development.
• 1:49:23
  So, our goal here is long-term Youth Athletic development,
• 1:49:27
  okay? And so our goal, I get, you
• 1:49:29
  wouldn't believe how many parents come up to me?
• 1:49:31
  All my son is 13, he plays baseball but he's really slow,
• 1:49:34
  you know, and it's like well. He we teach our kids, how to
• 1:49:38
  play every sport. Throw a football, kick a
• 1:49:40
  football, basketball baseball. But we never teach our kids.
• 1:49:43
  How to run? Hmm, we need to be teaching our
• 1:49:45
  kids at age, 7, 8, 9, and 10 learning mechanics from the
• 1:49:49
  beginning. And now, you know, I got a
• 1:49:51
  quarterback group here. These guys are playing
• 1:49:54
  high-level quarterback in high school and they can't do, you
• 1:49:58
  know, they can't do high knees. You know, it's absolutely
• 1:50:01
  amazing. They just a coordination skills
• 1:50:03
  aren't there. And so our goal here is to Get
• 1:50:06
  a, get an athlete when they're young and then really work with
• 1:50:10
  them over a period of years. And you know, of course, that's
• 1:50:13
  an investment for a parent, over over the years, to get it to get
• 1:50:15
  a scholarship. But it's also, you know, we're
• 1:50:18
  can't, we're trying to capture the club Market as well.
• 1:50:20
  So these are parents who have committed in their kids, who
• 1:50:23
  have committed to, you know, play Club Level Sports.
• 1:50:27
  But we also have Pros here, you know?
• 1:50:28
  So just for example, a couple weeks ago, you know, Derrick
• 1:50:31
  Rose came through basketball player.
• 1:50:33
  And his wife, his wife actually is from, you know, And Southern
• 1:50:37
  10 p.m. until three days, any worked out in the facility and
• 1:50:40
  we'll put on will have, we won't have a very big one this first
• 1:50:43
  year but you're too will put on a big will put on a big combine
• 1:50:46
  training program last year. When Major League Baseball was
• 1:50:50
  on strike, we had Major League Baseball Players Association at
• 1:50:54
  our facility. We had about 75 guys but you
• 1:50:56
  know, we can feed them in the morning.
• 1:50:58
  They could training and you know, whether it's on the
• 1:51:00
  baseball field or in the performance center and then we
• 1:51:03
  feed them lunch and they're out the door and you know, we We
• 1:51:06
  just put together programs like that.
• 1:51:08
  So, we're trying to be like a One, Stop Shop for athlete
• 1:51:11
  coming in from out of the country or, you know, across the
• 1:51:14
  country to train with us. I'm just trying to bolster my
• 1:51:18
  coaching staff because, you know, I got a couple really good
• 1:51:21
  coaches who, I trust to coach high-level athletes.
• 1:51:23
  But then I've got up and coming coaches as well.
• 1:51:26
  But more than anything we want people to come see the facility
• 1:51:29
  and, you know, learn what our program is.
• 1:51:32
  And so, you know, we we've got to deal with Park University.
• 1:51:36
  Which is a, which is an NAIA online, they don't have any
• 1:51:39
  facilities, so we're their athletic department, and then
• 1:51:42
  we've signed deals with some of the Gestalt groups in the state
• 1:51:44
  of Arizona, and we probably see about 15 hundred athletes a week
• 1:51:48
  in this performance center. Wow.
• 1:51:51
  What do you do? One of my favorite discussions
• 1:51:53
  to have with the coaches that we have here on the podcast is to
• 1:51:56
  talk about coaches education. It's probably one of my favorite
• 1:51:59
  topics because it was such a big deal for me.
• 1:52:01
  And my career when I was coaching, what do you do?
• 1:52:03
  This is a unique aspect. What do you do?
• 1:52:06
  Do whether it's a formal type of coaching education or informal
• 1:52:09
  meaning. You know, I work with these
• 1:52:11
  mentors or I read these books or this video series.
• 1:52:14
  Whatever what do you do in the capacity that you're in today
• 1:52:18
  for coaching, education, to make yourself better to help these
• 1:52:20
  these kids, whether it's the parents, the kids of the parents
• 1:52:23
  or these professionals that come into the facility, but we've got
• 1:52:26
  to have top-level coaches in case.
• 1:52:28
  Oh, my lead trainers names. Frank Davis, he played in the
• 1:52:30
  NFL for four years and then he got out of the NFL from a, from
• 1:52:34
  the player standpoint. And Spent his entire life in
• 1:52:37
  professional weight rooms and college weight room.
• 1:52:40
  So, you know, before he came before he was here, he was at,
• 1:52:43
  you know, Oklahoma for 10 years that he spent three years at
• 1:52:46
  UCLA. He married, and he married a
• 1:52:48
  lady from Queen Creek Arizona. And so now he lives here and I
• 1:52:51
  found him working at an EOS. Well, next thing, you know,
• 1:52:55
  Frank roles in, he's a fantastic programmer, but we use a guy
• 1:52:58
  like Frank. Now to Mentor, those young
• 1:53:01
  students coming out of college. I got three or four kids here.
• 1:53:05
  This is our first job. Out of college, okay?
• 1:53:07
  And they can learn from a guy like that, who's been with the
• 1:53:09
  Philadelphia Phillies have been with the Oklahoma Sooners.
• 1:53:12
  This is how we operate and within you know, within that
• 1:53:17
  coaching model I think you can learn more of his you know much
• 1:53:21
  more if not as much then if you were to study for NS you know
• 1:53:27
  NSC a typo, you need those certifications of course.
• 1:53:31
  But this practical experience goes a long ways and we got a
• 1:53:34
  lot of people who are in turning under Who are, you know, at the
• 1:53:38
  coming out from Park University, we got interns there that want
• 1:53:41
  to learn from these high-level coaches know.
• 1:53:44
  What's interesting is, you know, everybody asked me about my
• 1:53:47
  certifications and everything and it's like I've lost track of
• 1:53:50
  my of my USA Track and Field certifications.
• 1:53:53
  However you know, I am not a certified trainer like cscc a or
• 1:53:59
  nsca, but I'm an expert. Okay.
• 1:54:02
  Which makes me just a little bit different expert in you know,
• 1:54:05
  speed training and And certainly the certainly, the sport of
• 1:54:07
  track and field, but I let these coaches, you know, I let these
• 1:54:10
  coaches write a lot of the workouts.
• 1:54:13
  Try to put my input in there and we try to Mentor as many young
• 1:54:15
  athletes and and move them on and what gives us great amount
• 1:54:19
  of pride is when somebody comes and works with us and then they
• 1:54:23
  get that next job. You know, got by the name of
• 1:54:26
  Ryan Yeager came and he was my head programmer boom.
• 1:54:28
  Now he's with the Minnesota Timberwolves and that makes out.
• 1:54:31
  And while it may not make the executives here, very glad that
• 1:54:34
  they lost a great coach. That's our job is to help
• 1:54:38
  educate somebody and move them on in life.
• 1:54:41
  Yeah. Yeah I think you're spot on
• 1:54:43
  there. You know.
• 1:54:43
  I think the different certifications was the cscs is
• 1:54:47
  or the usatf level ones and twos, I think certainly they
• 1:54:50
  have a place in our sport in our coaching body.
• 1:54:54
  I think the other side of it learning from people who have
• 1:54:57
  done is just as important, I don't think just because someone
• 1:55:01
  doesn't have a certification that they're any less of a
• 1:55:04
  person in fact using your Each degree example.
• 1:55:07
  I'm not convinced that you are not a good person just because
• 1:55:10
  you don't have a degree. I mean, it's important I guess
• 1:55:14
  to get a degree. But that doesn't tell me you are
• 1:55:16
  better or not better or smarter or not smarter person just
• 1:55:19
  because you, you know, did 120 credits or whatever, you know to
• 1:55:23
  finalize it Lord knows, I mean, I can only imagine some of the
• 1:55:25
  classes you took, there's some classes I took in college is
• 1:55:27
  like really I'd have that to be smart to have a degree right?
• 1:55:30
  Get out of here you know but I think of like organizations like
• 1:55:34
  Altus with Dan path and Do in those guys that, you know, you
• 1:55:37
  go there. And I think they starting to
• 1:55:39
  give like certificates for it but there's no, that's not a
• 1:55:42
  formal. Like you'll never see, hey, have
• 1:55:44
  Altus level one speed and strength to get this job.
• 1:55:47
  But boy, the guys and gals, I go through those programs.
• 1:55:50
  They are learning from some of the best people.
• 1:55:52
  There are, you know, we just had Dan path on the podcast and I
• 1:55:56
  tell you what, you talk to that man for an hour.
• 1:55:59
  I'm not sure you don't learn more in that hour than you learn
• 1:56:01
  in an introductory certification class.
• 1:56:04
  So I think having those people All to talk to and being open to
• 1:56:08
  their experiences. Can make you a phenomenal coach
• 1:56:12
  and mentor to others and I totally agree.
• 1:56:15
  You know, I listen to that podcast with Dan and I think
• 1:56:18
  what was so amazing about him is, you know, humble beginnings.
• 1:56:22
  But this is a guy who loved coaching so much, love the sport
• 1:56:24
  of track and field he was willing to go anywhere anyway,
• 1:56:27
  you know? And that's one thing that a lot
• 1:56:28
  of people, these days aren't willing to do is just get up,
• 1:56:33
  pick up, move to States over because you You get a coaching
• 1:56:37
  opportunity and it's like somebody.
• 1:56:38
  I'm going to move across the country for 60 thousand dollars
• 1:56:40
  a year job and it's just like, you know, that's what we all had
• 1:56:43
  to do for a long long time, you know.
• 1:56:46
  And I say the same about athletes as well.
• 1:56:49
  You know and we as athletes we want to be in this real
• 1:56:52
  comfortable comfortable bubble and yes, our private lives are
• 1:56:56
  very important to our success but so often we don't take
• 1:57:00
  chances get up and move across the country and get with the
• 1:57:02
  right coach in the right situation.
• 1:57:04
  You never know. You never know.
• 1:57:06
  Nowhere. That's you never know what
• 1:57:07
  that's going to lead you. Yeah, I think I've heard about
• 1:57:10
  people who didn't want to go to Bobby curse.
• 1:57:12
  He's group in LA because it was either too expensive or I don't
• 1:57:16
  want to be in LA and it's like man you might be passing out on
• 1:57:19
  the opportunity. You only get two.
• 1:57:21
  You don't get many chances to win a gold medal.
• 1:57:22
  It may only come once by the way and you're not going to go with
• 1:57:25
  maybe the best coach. I mean, just recently, several
• 1:57:29
  high-profile athletes joined them.
• 1:57:30
  So, maybe maybe that's changing. But it's like, man, you're not
• 1:57:33
  going to give it your all for four years, even if that means
• 1:57:36
  Live in LA, there's worse things to do.
• 1:57:38
  And there's where people to go coach with to be worked with
• 1:57:41
  that's forever. Then you know I don't know why
• 1:57:44
  this question popped into my head here to kind of end it
• 1:57:47
  today. You know, I've met you and talk
• 1:57:50
  with you several times. You are always you're one of the
• 1:57:53
  you remind me of a Lonnie Green, you know Lonnie at Kentucky.
• 1:57:56
  Yeah you know Loni love him to death again, another kill
• 1:57:59
  podcast, Alum and dear friend, he's always positive and I know
• 1:58:03
  life is not always positive. There's things that get thrown
• 1:58:06
  That you that, you know, life happens, right?
• 1:58:08
  But he's always, you know, my come blessed.
• 1:58:10
  That's his, that's his line. I'm blessed.
• 1:58:12
  But, you know, because of his constant positivity, it picks me
• 1:58:15
  up. Like it's hard for me to feel
• 1:58:17
  bad about what's going on in my life when I'm around a guy like
• 1:58:20
  Lonnie and you're very similar to that.
• 1:58:22
  Every time I see you at a convention or at the track meet,
• 1:58:25
  you're quick with a smile, you're quick with a handshake,
• 1:58:27
  you're quick with a, how are you doing?
• 1:58:29
  You're always upbeat and positive, how are you doing?
• 1:58:33
  Are you happy with where you are today?
• 1:58:35
  And where things are? Going.
• 1:58:37
  When I'm around track and field, I'm a happy person and my best
• 1:58:41
  friend will tell you that. You know, I'll get out of the
• 1:58:42
  car at the parking lot at ASU to just watch the sun, angel
• 1:58:45
  classic. And he's just like, man, you're
• 1:58:47
  in a good mood and it says like, hey, you know, I'm going to a
• 1:58:49
  track meet. So when I go to the convention
• 1:58:52
  and I am at the US championships or the NCAA championships, I am
• 1:58:56
  in a good mood. I, well, that, that puts me in a
• 1:58:58
  good mood. You know, I have, I have bad
• 1:59:00
  days, certainly, but I learned a long time ago, that, you know, I
• 1:59:03
  have a choice, I have a choice whether to, you know, whether to
• 1:59:06
  Smile or not smile or be happy. And I'll never forget, I was,
• 1:59:09
  you know, I, my first Big Sky indoor Championship, we're
• 1:59:12
  hosting it at the University of Idaho and I'm doing some hurdle
• 1:59:15
  drills and guy comes over to me and says, what are you angry
• 1:59:19
  about? And as a, what do you mean, is
• 1:59:20
  that all you got a scowl on your face?
• 1:59:22
  And I didn't know that I was doing that as an athlete just
• 1:59:25
  can't, you know? But it's like okay, that's me as
• 1:59:28
  an athlete. And I always, you know, when I
• 1:59:31
  when I step through the gate into practice, I let everything
• 1:59:35
  go. And then when I step through
• 1:59:36
  Gate to go out of practice again.
• 1:59:38
  It's like, okay, that's not the person I am outside.
• 1:59:42
  And so, I mean I just have too many things to be grateful for,
• 1:59:47
  you know what, I've been told my wife like if I ever have any
• 1:59:49
  health issues just, you know, wheel, my wheelchair in front of
• 1:59:52
  the TV. There's too many good things on
• 1:59:54
  television. There's Just Don't Unplug Me.
• 1:59:56
  Just let me go me get, let me catch up on my my streaming
• 2:00:00
  shows. Well, there's just that
• 2:00:01
  something I, you know, life's all about opportunities and you
• 2:00:06
  know, You make, you make your, you make your, you make yourself
• 2:00:10
  happy. And I just I choose to wake up
• 2:00:12
  every day and see see the, you know, see the positive in
• 2:00:16
  everything then man, I love it. I love you.
• 2:00:20
  You know, it's your story is quite amazing in regards to how
• 2:00:25
  many times you could have should have quit.
• 2:00:29
  How many people how many times people could have quit on you
• 2:00:33
  and maybe others not not, maybe certainly other I would have
• 2:00:37
  quit on you. I mean, there's people that
• 2:00:38
  would not have taken those chances.
• 2:00:39
  And those second, the third and fourth chances on Yahoo, I'm
• 2:00:41
  still just blown away by Larry Hunt.
• 2:00:44
  You know, we talk about the huge figures in our Sport and we go
• 2:00:48
  to a lot of the people we talked about today.
• 2:00:50
  Yourself Jenner, hearing mayor has Fred Samara, we talk about
• 2:00:53
  those kind of people rightfully so.
• 2:00:55
  And we forget about a guy named Like Larry who, like I said, he
• 2:00:58
  changed track and field world. I'm just amazed by people in.
• 2:01:01
  So thankful that people like that were placed into your life.
• 2:01:04
  I mean, that to me, is that That's why I say, you know,
• 2:01:07
  things work out the way they're supposed to be.
• 2:01:09
  That's that's what gives me the belief in that psycho man, Larry
• 2:01:12
  Hunt, was where he was supposed to be that day, to talk to you,
• 2:01:15
  about doing the decathlon of all things, for crying out loud, not
• 2:01:19
  to become a better hurdler. To be the whole enchilada to do
• 2:01:21
  the multi, man. So, I'm just thankful for you
• 2:01:24
  being here today. Thankful for you sharing your
• 2:01:26
  story. Thank you for, you know, talking
• 2:01:28
  about the coaches that poured into your life and have made you
• 2:01:32
  who you are today and what's awesome is, you know, I know
• 2:01:35
  you've had a career It's a different careers.
• 2:01:38
  You're still, you know I know what the age and Stage you're
• 2:01:41
  at. It's easy to say oh I'm getting
• 2:01:42
  close to that Finish Line brother.
• 2:01:44
  Would the the health system we have now you might be barely at
• 2:01:47
  halftime like you still have so many years in front of you to
• 2:01:50
  affect other people. And I'm just, I'm excited to see
• 2:01:52
  it. I think this position here at
• 2:01:55
  Legacy Sports is going to grow to help other people, and to
• 2:01:58
  affect our sport. There's going to be you're going
• 2:02:00
  to create other Larry hunts that are going to affect sports that
• 2:02:02
  no one's going to their name, but thank God, they were there
• 2:02:04
  to affect their Sports and it's going to become Um, come from
• 2:02:07
  the leadership and the expertise that you're helping and showing
• 2:02:10
  other coaches and other athletes out there.
• 2:02:12
  I'm excited to watch it. This thing is going to grow and
• 2:02:14
  it's going to grow because of guys like you.
• 2:02:17
  Well, I appreciate that and just, you know, another full
• 2:02:19
  circle, just quick story. My junior college coach Duane
• 2:02:22
  Hartman. He got to officiate the high
• 2:02:25
  jump at the Olympic Games in Atlanta during the decathlon.
• 2:02:28
  And while I was on a separate pit, but I came over to him and
• 2:02:32
  he and I shared a very special moment, you know, and the past.
• 2:02:37
  You know, he passed away about six years later, but it was
• 2:02:39
  just, we got to share that moment and he was trying to be
• 2:02:42
  officials. Say hello, I can't talk to you.
• 2:02:44
  And I was like, coach, we're at the Olympics, you know, we're at
• 2:02:46
  the Olympics together and you know, yeah, that's a thing.
• 2:02:50
  A little tiny office at Spokane Community College.
• 2:02:52
  And you know, that was his dream to go to the Olympics as well,
• 2:02:55
  man. That's you've lived a life man.
• 2:02:58
  Like I said, you got so much more in front of you.
• 2:03:00
  It's quite amazing. Hey, if you're listening and you
• 2:03:02
  enjoyed this story, like said go check out the book.
• 2:03:05
  Her clearing hurdles. The quest to become the world's
• 2:03:07
  greatest athlete. I'm going to go out on a limb.
• 2:03:10
  I can get this on Amazon and all those kind of places you have
• 2:03:12
  course, you can't get on Amazon anymore.
• 2:03:14
  Is it really a book? I don't think so, but go check
• 2:03:17
  it out. It's a great book.
• 2:03:18
  I'm excited for it. I'm excited for you, Dan and
• 2:03:21
  again, just thankful man. I'm always blessed when people
• 2:03:23
  come and visit us here in the podcast and we're better off
• 2:03:27
  because you were here today, man.
• 2:03:28
  Thank you so much. Thank you.
• 2:03:30
  You guys are doing great things, I listen to, I listen to
• 2:03:32
  podcasts all the time, I'm glad I found you.
• 2:03:34
  Thanks my brother. All right, y'all have a great
• 2:03:35
  day.