Olympic gold medalist Billy Mills looked up at the brown clay statue that depicts him running in the Olympic race he won 49 years ago. He became teary-eyed, though he didn’t want to admit it.
“I wasn’t ready for it,” he said. “It’s not about Billy, it’s about dreams.”
Mills, 75, was referring to his youthful dream of winning the 10,000-meter race in the Olympics, a feat he accomplished in the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. To date, Mills remains the only American to win the 10,000-meter race at the Olympics, and the member of the Oglala Lakota tribe was the second Native American to win an Olympic medal. That distinction is part of what inspired Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. George Rivera to create a statue honoring Mills’ accomplishments.
Rivera said he will cast a mold of the clay statue to create a bronze version that will go outside Rock Chalk Park, a new athletic facility at Mills’ alma matter, the University of Kansas.
The statue, just under 12 feet tall, doesn’t stand so much as it floats. The statue’s arms and legs are angled to mimic Mills’ lengthy gait in the Olympic race. The final product, Rivera said, will have a curved steel support stretching from the body to a base that will keep the figure suspended in air, thereby replicating a moment when Mills was completely airborne in the final 100 meters of the race.
The statue’s base will feature an eagle and an arrowhead.
Rivera spent months on a smaller version of the Mills statue, and on Sunday, that metal prototype sat in the studio next to a laptop computer playing footage of the historic 1964 race. Rivera and those gathered watched the video at least three times as Mills answered interview questions, but it’s the sort of clip that’s endlessly rewatchable.
It starts with an announcer who lists the front-runners and describes Mills as “a man no one expects to win this particular event.” Mills, then a lieutenant in the Marines Reserve, was considered a long shot given that he only finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials.
The favorite was Australian Ron Clarke, who held the world record at the time. But Mills hung with Clarke throughout the race, even as the majority of competitors slowed. It wasn’t until the final stretch of the last lap that Mills surged past Clarke and Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia, claiming the gold and making history. He also set a new Olympic record in the 10,000-meter race (25 laps around a track) with a time of 28:24.4, which was 50 seconds faster than he had ever run the race.
Rivera’s studio was lined Sunday with dozens of pictures of Mills during the race, and he claimed that he must have watched the race more than 100 times to recreate every detail, from the position of Mills’ legs and arms to the Olympian’s straining shoulder muscles.
Other photos focus on Mills’ raised arms as he crosses the finish line, but Rivera said he wanted to recreate the moment that Mills sprinted past Clarke and Gammoudi.
“Very few humans can do that,” Rivera said. “I wanted that intensity.”
Contact Chris Quintana at 986-3093 or cquintana@sfnewmexican.com.
(1) comment
Billy Mills victory was a victory for himself, for all Native Americans, and for all Americans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVlKVWFmfhk
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