A sprinter from the jump

Sometimes I think a step of his protest goes unnoticed. His entire powerful gesture was predicated on him winning and being the best in the world. If Tommie hadn’t had the speed, the talent and the discipline, he might not have been there to raise his fist. He shattered the 20-second barrier. He told me his entire athletic foundation is like a hybrid of Mr. Miyagi’s paint-the-fence, sand-the-floor school of training and the montage in “Rocky IV” when he works out on whatever’s hanging around that snowy Russian farm. “[My] brothers and sisters, and we used to chase each other everywhere we went. We would never walk. We had no car, so we had to run. We had to get someplace fast,” he said. “We ran.” He said his sister was even faster than him.