News15 Sep 2003


Weighing up the options. Devers considers retirement

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Gail Devers fails to qualify for the 100m Hurdles final (© Getty Images)

MonteCarloWith her worldleading 12.45 second win today, Gail Devers couldn't have come up with a better way in which to end her season.  It may have also been the final race of what has become a legendary career.

"That could have been my last race," the two-time Olympic 100m and three-time World 100m Hurdles champion said bluntly.  "And I would be happy with that.  I could just walk away."

Speaking plainly, Devers said, "It's time to go home and do some real soul-searching.  It takes a lot for me to come back year after year.  I'm very competitive and it takes a lot out of me mentally and physically.  I have to find whatever it is that's going to make me come back next year." And, she truthfully added, "I don't have it right now."

But even after a race she wasn't particularly pleased with --"My race didn't feel very good," she said, "I felt very high off the hurdles"-- she said that her decision to move on is not a question of quitting.

"After 22 years on top, it's not quitting," she explained.  "It's moving on with the rest of my life.  Quitting is, 'Oh, she had a bad race and now she doesn't want to come back.'  If I decide to move on with my life on my own terms, that's not quitting.  Quitting is when you don't try.  I've tried for 22 years.  And I'm pleased with what I've been able to accomplish."

She tried to add a 100m/100m hurdle double to her long list of accomplishments at last month's World Championships, but insisted that her double attempt --she finished 8th in the 100 metres-- was not the reason why she didn't reach the final in her specialty.

The double, she said, "Wasn't my problem. My problem was I was fast and I hit the hurdles.  I felt fresh, I felt fine.  In fact I felt better than usual.  Had I finished that race at the pace I was going, it was 12.38. Which is what I was going for, to go under 12.40.  My body felt fine.  My body feels like I'm 19."

What she was concentrating on in Paris were fast times.  Nothing more, nothing less.

"I'm never going to back off my speed, ever," she continued.  "It probably would have been safe to back off my speed at worlds to get into the final, but that's not what I'm going after.  I have gold medals.  I'm going after fast times.  I'll keep saying it: I want to erase times on the all-time list.  I have three names to erase.  So I have to go after fast times.  And the only way to do that is to find my speed and keep challenging myself."

The choice she needs to make is whether she really wants to continue challenging herself on the track.  She said her ultimate decision will come sometime in November, perhaps close to the 19th, when she will celebrate her 37th birthday.  Right now though, the furthest thing from her mind is anything related to athletics.

"All I'm thinking about is going home.  I don't want to see a spike, I don't want to see anything on television that implies running or working out."

For the past few seasons, a ritual has developed, where she sits down and makes a simple list, one that helps her direct her life on or off the track.

"It's just a listing of the pros and cons on why I would not come back and why I would come back.  There are a lot of things that I want to do, and track and field takes up a lot of my time.  I've been doing this for 22 years.  My first time in Europe was 1985.  It's been a long time.  Im not really sure that I want to continue, to be honest."

On the "pro" list, she said, is the honest assessment that she can still run faster than her 12.33 best, and erase another name or two from the all-time list.

"I do know that I don't feel like I've reached my best yet, so that's something that, even though you may want to quit, I know that I have not reached my peak."

On the "con' side is a growing list of other things she wants to do, including television, the further development of her foundation, and simply enjoying more time with her neices, nephews and Godchildren.

So now, she's going home to her Pomeranian, Caleb, and the house plants she's been neglecting, where she will eventually sit down and make a list.

"I can't tell you that I'm going to be back next year," she concluded. "If I come back, it's going to be because I'm really going to set some goals."

Whether those goals come on the track or off, it is certain that she will tackle them head on.  "The only way to do that is to challenge myself. Nobody else is going to challenge me, but me."

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