He was steel. Gardner looked more like a doughboy. With no notebook in hand, I grabbed a handful of result sheets from earlier matches and went off to interview Gardner. At least half a dozen times, he mentioned how stunned he was to have won. I think I saw tears of joy as he stood for the national anthem.
Big boys do cry.
I'm glad I got a chance to witness it, even if it was only by accident. American the boot-iful it ain't. The United States was the only nation in the competition to send its men's and women's teams as far as the semifinals. Nigeria didn't, either. Every day for four years, cyclist Marty Nothstein of Trexlertown, Pa., thought about his loss in the finals of the match sprint at the Atlanta Olympics.