Angela Williams began celebrating as soon as she'd bounced off the padded barrier at the end of the dash strip last night. She didn't need to look at the scoreboard to know what the previous 7.11 seconds meant.
"I'm b-a-a-a-ack," exulted Williams, after she'd held off Alexis Joyce and Carmelita Jeter to regain her US indoor title in the 60 meters at the Reggie Lewis Center and get a ticket to next month's world championships in Valencia, Spain.
Back from the pain and doubt and frustration of the past four years. Back with her legs in one piece for a change. Back in the mix for Olympus, where she has unfinished business from Athens.
"It's a good start," said the 28-year-old Williams, who'd dropped so far in the sprint rankings over the past couple of years that USA Track & Field didn't do a bio of her. "I'm very pleased with myself. I'm just blessed to be healthy. I'm not worrying about the contracts, the money, the celeb."
There was a time when Williams figured the sport was logical and just, that talent and hard work delivered rewards. That was before the injuries and before the 2004 Olympics, when she watched a certain relay medal vanish from the other end of the track.
Williams led off the 4 x 100 and handed the stick to Marion Jones, but it never got to Lauryn Williams, who ran out of the exchange zone. "I could taste the medal," Angela Williams said after her teammates, devastated and sobbing, had been disqualified. "It was ours." And then it wasn't.
It took her a while to reconcile herself.
"I was disappointed, but at least I'd made it," Williams said. "Most people have never been to the Olympics." Certainly not with both legs cracked beneath her, as they'd been at the 2003 world outdoor meet, where Williams had won a silver relay medal while taped up to her knees. "I made the Olympic team on broken shins," she said. "You have to find some positivity in all the negativity."
Negativity was pretty much all there was for the next three years. Williams had surgery after the Games, "but I rushed back in '05 and I wasn't ready. In '06, I was out of shape." Last summer, she couldn't get out of the heats in the 100 meters at the US outdoor championships and missed the world meet in Japan.
Then, in a summer race in Zagreb, she tore a hamstring and was done for the season. "I thought, awwwww . . . just when I think I have everything together, something happens," Williams said.
Once healed, she was off the radar screen, which may have been a blessing. Williams skipped the domestic Visa Series and spent most of the indoor season in Europe, winning a few races and getting her confidence back. But she wasn't the favorite here. Jeter, the world outdoor bronze medalist who'd won two of the three Visa races, was.
But 60 meters is Williams's specialty, and she figured she had a terrific shot here, especially after posting the fastest prelim (7.15). "I have been blessed with a very good start," she said. "I have a quick twitch that allows me to really zoom in the first part of the race."
Williams came out of the blocks as if she'd been shot out of a cannon and won by .1 seconds, then pumped her legs in delight. Besides the title, there was a $2,500 check and a trip to the world meet, at which she won silver in 2001 and 2003. "I've got my swagger back," Williams said. "I'm just going to go and have some fun."
The serious stuff starts this spring, when Williams begins prepping for the Olympic trials and another shot at the Games. The field, she knows, will be brutally competitive - Torri Edwards, Jeter, Lauryn Williams, Allyson Felix, and twin sisters Lisa and Miki Barber. "Everyone I line up with has something," she said. "Everyone's good."
Still, when Williams has been fit (and even when she hasn't been), she's been able to find a way to get on a relay and make something happen. She was the most promising sprinter of her generation, the first high-schooler to break 11 seconds, a four-time NCAA 100-meter champion at USC. And while the last quadrennium has been a trial, it's helped Williams get back to the place where she came from, when she was a fast child who ran for the pure joy of it.
"I'm at peace now," she said.
She doesn't obsess any longer about gold medals, about the contracts and the money and the celeb "and whether I'm getting my just due." What happened - or didn't happen - in Athens taught Williams that much of what occurs in her sport is literally out of her hands.
What she has learned is that if you keep finding the positivity in the negativity and keep lacing up the spikes, that the world will come back around for you. It's an Olympic year again and Angela Williams has two good legs under her and another national title on her résumé. She'll take that and run. "God shows up just in time," she said.
