Glance Carries Credentials to Beijing in ?08
3/20/2007 12:00:00 AM
By Scott Latta
UA Media Relations
Ask Harvey Glance about the hardest part of being the head track coach at the University of Alabama, and he won’t talk about the rigorous schedule, the physical demands of his job, or the responsibility of mentoring the hundreds of athletes that have come under his instruction.
The problem comes in his qualifications ?? there are so many of them, he says, that it’s often difficult to draw the line between athlete and coach.
“The biggest thing I’ve had to overcome as a coach is the athlete side of it,” Glance said. “I think sometimes people still see me as the athlete instead of the coach, and sometimes I almost want to pull out a piece of paper and show my resume with the All-Americans and the national champs and Olympians and things of that nature and people say, ??Wow, I never thought you did that.’”
Indeed, Glance’s list of accomplishments is long and has been growing since his days as a college athlete at Auburn University. He is a 16-time All-American, three-time Olympic qualifier and 1976 gold medal winner. He has medaled at the Pan American Games, the World Cup, the Goodwill Games and the World Championships. He is a 1996 inductee into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and was named in 2002 one of the Top 100 athletes in the state of Alabama during the 20th century.
His athletic achievements are why he says people walk into his office and assume every plaque on the wall is from a race he ran or record he broke. It isn’t until Glance opens his mouth that visitors realize that the numerous awards that adorn his wall aren’t because of things he has done, but what the athletes under his tutelage have done.
“It’s great to be remembered as an athlete, but I think it’s bigger to be remembered as a coach,” Glance said. “You go outside of something that’s destined by yourself to fitting in an environment where you’re impacting other people’s lives. I had an impact on my own, and to translate what I feel into someone else’s life who has had similar experiences is very, very rewarding.”
Glance’s experience as an Olympian came full circle March 16, when it was announced that he would coach the United States track and field team at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The former world-record holder will focus primarily on coaching sprints and hurdles for Team USA.
The honor comes 31 years after Glance and Team USA won gold at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal in the 4x100m relay. Glance, who was the fastest man in America at the time, was asked by his coach before the race to give up his duties as the team’s anchor leg to run leadoff instead, due to the fact that the team had no one that could handle the curves of the track.
Without pause, he said, he knew what his answer would be.
“Without hesitation I said that the ultimate goal was for us to win the gold,” he said. “I put away my pride and all that for my country and put us in position to win the gold medal, and I did.
“I got the team off to a great start and looked up after the second leg and just started raising my hands because I knew the rest was history. It was just a matter of getting the stick around the track.”
Four years later, Glance made the 1980 Olympic team but would not compete due to the United States’ boycott of the Games in Moscow. Instead, he sat home and watched as runners he would later defeat in smaller races claim gold, silver and bronze. The experience, he said, left him bitter at the sport until he got a proposition ?? one that would further etch his place in track and field history.
“After 1980, I had contemplated retirement at a very early age,” Glance said. “I had had such a disappointment that I didn’t know if I could go another four years and have something else politically happen and I’d be swiped again, and I didn’t know if I could handle that.
“My coach reminded me that at that time that only one other guy had made three Olympic teams in history as a sprinter, and I had the opportunity to match that. One thing that’s always motivated me is to put history out there and I’ll chase it.”
Glance made the 1984 Olympic relay team as an alternate to become only the second man at that time to ever make three Olympic teams. Since then, one other man has accomplished the feat: Carl Lewis, who was Glance’s teammate on the ’84 team.
After retiring from the sport, Glance returned to the college ranks as a coach and joined the University of Alabama staff in 1997 as Head Track Coach. Today, his gold medal sits in a safety deposit box, where he only takes it out for special occasions or speaking engagements. In his office is a picture of a much younger Glance, smiling in his Team USA uniform and afro, proudly boasting the gold.
Now, at 49, he has a chance to earn another; to build on his Olympic experience and represent his country again ?? not as an athlete, but as a coach.
“One thing I always tell the student-athletes is that no matter what goals they set for themselves, there’s nothing they’ll experience that I haven’t gone through,” he said. “I understand the dreams, I understand the failures, I understand the successes. I’ve been through it all. The great thing is the experience I’ve had and bring to the table. No matter what they talk about, I can relate immediately, and there are a lot of coaches that probably can’t do that. It has great benefits.
“Sometimes I have to remind them that I’m that conference champion they’re trying to become. I’m that national champion they want to become. I’m that world record holder. Then I think sometimes they sit back and go, ??Oh yeah.’
“But that’s all right,” he says. “It’s not about me. It’s about helping them get to the next level.”
