Goldengirl came off the bend well clear, beginning the final phase of her run, hair fanned on the still air, limbs moving in parallel planes. Ninety metres to the finish. The muscles contracted on her neck as she gathered herself. The change from coast to maximum effort was smooth. Sixty metres out, she was still ahead, but not secure. The figure behind was cutting her down like a falcon. At thirty metres, there was space between them. At twenty, they were locked. From somewhere, she summoned the strength to raise her knees a fraction higher, stretch her stride by the margin necessary to meet the challenge. Then metres from the line she had powered herself centimetres ahead. As they crossed, she forced her torso forward, but she had got it wrong. The black runner beside her had dipped a microsecond earlier and stolen it.
‘So where do we go from here?’ Klugman demanded of Goldine’s bowed, gasping form. ‘Back to forty-metre dashes, or what? We spend three weeks perfecting that dip.
Harry Makepeace straightened to his six foot three and shook his head. ‘Not with me, you won’t. That time I bust my hump catching her. Oh boy, I really must be getting old.’
Klugman turned his contempt on Makepeace. ‘You mean you can’t give fifteen metres in two hundred to a dame?’
‘Four times, yes. I can lay back and leech off her, but that one hurt. It’s the altitude, Pete. Right now I have spaghetti legs. What did she clock? Man, she was burning the last fifty.’
Klugman glanced at the stopwatch in his hand. ‘Inside twenty-four again. The time’s insignificant. We’re working on technique.’
‘Five runs inside twenty-four — that’s going some,’ said Makepeace. ‘I tell you, Pete, I’m screwed.’
‘Okay,’ conceded Klugman. ‘You take the gun. We’ll give Brannon a workout. He’d better start level with her. I don’t see him breaking twenty-four from fifteen metres back. Have him use lane one. We’ll put her in three.’
‘Go easy on her,’ said Makepeace. ‘It’s not easy judging it from up front. In a dip finish, the runner from behind has the edge.’
‘You’re telling me nothing,’ said Klugman acidly.
He waited till Makepeace had started across the compound to give Brannon his orders, then told Goldine, ‘All right, Makepeace is no pushover. He learned his finishing on the boards, sixty-metre dashes with people like Williams and Borzov. We’ll work on this some more and you’ll take him. Elmer Brannon you can take right now. Treat it as a routine two hundred. Put him out of your mind till you’re in the stretch. You can ease a little up to 115 metres, if you like, then turn on your burner. He’ll come at you hard. Hold him level if you can. Make the dip just where you did this time, but make it like you mean it. Give it everything. Slam your boobs against your knees. Got it?’
Goldine stood upright, straightened her hair, looked evenly at Klugman, and gave a nod.
‘You okay?’ asked Klugman.
‘Sure.’
‘Want to tell me something?’
She hesitated, unsure of him. ‘I’m putting plenty into this, Pete. It’s not like it was six months back, when everything was a drag. I sometimes think you read me all wrong. I’m not a quitter. I’m going for gold, and nothing, but nothing, will stop me. I could just use a little encouragement now and then. There isn’t much joy in training with guys and getting beat each time.’
‘You like to be a winner, you mean?’
The way her eyes shone answered that question.
‘Like in San Diego?’
She was beginning to smile.
‘That made you feel good, huh, queening it over a bunch of no-hopers? You’d like some more? Maybe I should tell Makepeace and Brannon to ease up a little, give Goldengirl another ego trip.’
Her smile dissolved.
