ATHENS - She has spent a lifetime clearing hurdles. Perhaps she was doomed to finish her career on the wrong side of one.
On a hot August night, Gail Devers sat on a track with her two old friends pain and frustration. There was a searing ache in her left leg, and an unchallenged hurdle loomed behind her.
There, beneath the clear Greek sky, Devers resembled a tragic figure from mythology, doomed to enjoy her career everywhere but where it mattered the most.
Devers pulled at the adhesive wrap on her leg with her saber-length nails, and she tried to stand. She wobbled, she fell back. She sat, her Olympics over, her career possibly complete.
It was the latest, and probably the last, in a series of sad snapshots of Devers at the Olympics. Everywhere else, on the track and off, Devers sails over the hurdles in front of her. Once they light the flame, however, the hurdles reach up, trip her, drag her to the ground.
A matter of seconds and her Olympics were over. Devers jogged down the runway, and her left calf - the leg she plants on before jumping - cried in pain before she got to the first hurdle. She cried out and slid underneath, the other runners disappearing in the distance.
For Devers, this is always the story. She wins championships. She sets records. She leaps over every hurdle in her way, clearing them so easily that the event has become her personal trademark. Then come the Olympics, and the hurdles grow larger and meaner, and we all wait to see what they will do to Devers this time.
At the Olympics, she does not leap over hurdles. At the Olympics, she runs under ladders.
Want to talk about frustration? Try four years ago in Sydney, where Devers was flying. In the semifinals, however, her hamstring gave way, and she pulled up after completing only five hurdles.
Want to talk about close calls? Try eight years ago in Atlanta, where Devers was the hometown hero. She has never been better than she was in '96, and she showed it in the heats. In the final, however, she was slightly off, and she finished fourth.
Want to talk about tough luck? Try 12 years ago in Barcelona, where Devers was the young gun about to make a name for herself. She was leading the race, but her foot clipped the final hurdle, and Devers stumbled. She lurched across the finish line fifth.
Want to talk about pain? Try 16 years ago in Seoul, when Devers was a kid trying to figure out why her body was rebelling against her. Doctors finally diagnosed Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder, and there was talk about amputating her feet. She did not run well in the Games.
How could this have happened to Devers?
Given her history, how could it not have?
This time, Devers saw it coming. Seven days ago, back in Atlanta, she felt something pull in her left leg, and she knew it was trouble. Devers tried to tough it out, but she is 37 now, and in her fifth Olympics, and her body wasn't having any.
"Coming out on the practice track before I came here, it was feeling a little bit tighter than I wanted it to feel," Devers said. "I tried to block it out of my mind. I just said, "I'm going to run. I'm tougher than this, and I don't care that it's pulling, I'm going to go.' "
For Devers, the hard questions will come later. If she was injured, why didn't she give up her place in the 100-meter sprint to Marion Jones? Was it stubbornness? Was it rivalry? Was it competitiveness?
It is a singular activity, track. For all the talk of team, the lineups come one athlete to a lane. Devers wasn't about to step aside for her rival.
"It's easier in the 100 because it's consistent motion," Devers said. "It's pushing off in the hurdles that's the problem. I knew the 100 was my best bet to get through the Games at all. I didn't think it would pull again. I just thought I would feel scar tissue breaking up."
Give Devers this. Jones was the defending 100-meter champion, but Devers won the event twice before that. Only she and Wyomia Tyus have won back-to-back 100-meter golds. Devers also has a relay gold.
Yet, the hurdles are Devers' signature event, and her shortfall in the event is a hole in her resume. If she had been successful in it - and she was a heavy favorite in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney - what might her legacy have been?
Here's a guess. There would have been Florence Griffith Joyner, then Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Then there would have been Devers, the preacher's daughter who never really liked to run.
"Do I think I'm a failure?" Devers said. "I'm nowhere near being a failure because God has blessed me with endurance and mental strength."
That much is undeniable. Go back to Devers as a young woman, back in '88 when it was doctors, not competitors, who could not figure her out.
Diabetes, one doctor said. Exhaustion, said another. She had headaches, fatigue and blurred vision, and her feet were cracked, bleeding and oozing yellow fluid.
Despite all that, she ran. One after another, she sailed over the hurdles in her path, and before it was over, she had built herself a career worthy of admiration.
Was this the Final Hurdle of Gail Devers? Given her age, given the cruelty the Olympics seem to reserve for her, it seems time.
Even as she left the Olympic Stadium in a wheelchair, Devers said not. She has talked about trying to hang around for the '08 Games in Beijing.
Late in the evening, it seemed unkind to wonder what sort of agony might wait for her there.
