A runner's rhythm

By DAVE SCHEIBER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 27, 2000

World-famous runner Marty Liquori may not break records anymore, but he's achieving his personal best every day in Gainesville in the most unlikely manner.

GAINESVILLE -- Show time is less than an hour away for the Sweet Notes, and everything seems to be right on track. The group of mostly grandmotherly singers is running briskly through a final practice of old-time favorites, when someone who knows just a little bit about running speaks up.

"Are we doing this one faster than usual, or am I just slow?" asks the string accompanist, quietly looking up from a stack of song sheets.

The musician definitely stands out, and not just because he's the lone male, whose smooth guitar backs these 14 women in monthly concerts at Gainesville retirement homes and hospices. This man has been setting an impressive pace for a lifetime, with performances tied more to a stride than a strum.

And slow is one thing Marty Liquori has never been.

The May 24, 1971, Sports Illustrated cover says it all: a smiling Marty Liquori runs the mile against Jim Ryun and wins.

Thirty-three years ago, as a high school senior from New Jersey, Liquori ran the mile in 3:59.8, and to this day is the last U.S. high school runner to break the 4-minute mile mark. But for Liquori, that 1967 landmark was only a start. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, despite injuries and politics that undercut his Olympic hopes, he became the world's top runner in the mile and 5,000 meters, set three U.S. distance records and amassed a long list of honors.

At a time when the running boom was just kicking in, Liquori became the man of the moment on May 24, 1971. Amid hype worthy of an Ali-Frazier prizefight, he faced off in a "Dream Mile" showdown against Jim Ryun, who had ruled that distance from 1965 to 1967. Liquori held off Ryun to win at the wire, a dramatic image made timeless on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Off the track, Liquori has been equally successful. He has covered every Summer Olympics since 1972 as a track-and-field commentator for ABC, produces and hosts his own ESPN show and co-founded the running-shoe store Athletic Attic. He has co-written two books on running and one on fitness, and might have become a household-name author if he hadn't turned down Simon & Schuster's offer in the late '70s to write a running book for novices.

Diane Kauper on ukulele and Liquori, backing on guitar, perform at the Hospice of North Central Florida in Gainesville. Liquori’s renown was not readily apparent to the singing group. “He’s so humble,” Kauper says.

"My co-author and I wanted to do an intellectual book on the life of a runner, and this other idea sounded too simple, so we passed," he says. "Well, a year later, Jim Fixx writes (The Complete Book of Running), ends up selling a million copies and making 7-Up commercials. Obviously, a brilliant decision by me."

Liquori laughs off the memory. He isn't in commercials, but he is preparing for his debut on NBC's Olympic telecast team, with the trials next month in Sacramento and the Summer Games in Sydney in September.

Nothing has slowed Liquori, 50, all these years.

Not even news that shook his foundation in 1992 and altered the course of his life.

He had just returned from covering the Pan Am Games, concerned about a swollen lymph node. The tests confirmed it: chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The words were numbing at first. "I asked the doctor whether I should go home and get my affairs in order," he remembers. "He said, "Oh no, no. You could live 20 years or more, or you could have a problem a year from now. We don't know.' "

Yes, the condition is chronic; yes, it would return, though, so far, it has not. After undergoing chemotherapy early on, Liquori has been in remission. What's more, he has stayed in constant motion, keeping business running -- and running through a landscape of new priorities and pursuits.

He travels the nation and beyond several times a month to produce his Saucony Running and Racing Show for ESPN; at the same time, he helps raise millions of dollars for leukemia research as spokesman for a national athletic program sponsored by the Leukemia Society of America.

The bushy brown hair from his running days is cropped in a neat TV coif. His 6-foot-1, 190-pound frame (45 pounds heavier than his competing weight) is solid from a new hobby of mountain bike racing. And he has rediscovered a passion of his youth that might have become his calling -- guitar.

"When you get cancer, you ask, what is the list of things you want to do to feel you've had a happy life?" Liquori says. "And for me, one of those things was to go back and play music."

He does that for hours on end inside a spacious French colonial-style home in a hilly, upscale neighborhood. Several large modern-art paintings of Liquori from his racing days hang on a wall. They were commissioned by his ex-wife, a high school sweetheart whom he married at 18. Their son, Michael, a sophomore at Georgetown University, is an aspiring journalist.

Today, the track Hall of Famer shares his home with fiancee Debra Main and her two teen children. Guitars are an integral part of the Liquori decor.

In a front room, Yamaha and Harmony acoustic models rest on stands like musical sentries. Inside the living room, overlooking a wooded back yard and a placid lake, a small metal sculpture of a guitarist shares space on the shelves with dozens of books that reflect the diverse elements of his life -- Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Competitive World, The 1968 U.S. Olympic Book, a medical dictionary, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, The Gibson Les Paul Book.

In the corner rests a vintage 1947 Les Paul guitar. But inside a nearby hardshell case resides Liquori's pride and joy -- a one-of-a-kind, hollow-body jazz model built in Clearwater by renowned guitarmaker John Buscarino.

Crafted with rare wood, shining with a burnt-orange sunburst stain, this is the dream guitar that the Dream Miler bought several years after learning of his leukemia. It was just one of the things he wanted to do, after selling his hefty share of Athletic Attic three years ago to simplify his life and his finances.

Since then, he has put the deluxe model to excellent use, studying jazz guitar, theory and harmony with an instructor from nearby Sante Fe Community College. This is the instrument he uses to play intricate licks and fast-changing chords for the Sweet Notes -- despite breaking his left pinky in a mountain bike accident a few months back.

Liquori answered a newspaper ad for the singing group last year. The women wanted a piano accompanist. But Liquori, hoping to improve his playing in live settings, called anyway and offered his services on guitar. The women were skeptical at first and had no clue who the guy with the distinctive surname and mild Jersey accent was. But they liked his friendly, laid-back style and his tasteful guitar embellishments in classic tunes like Yes Sir That's My Baby, Taking A Chance On Love and Always.

The Sweet Note women were bowled over when a guest pianist, whose son-in-law had once run against Liquori, told the group about their guitarist. By then, they had fallen for just plain Marty.

"He's so humble," says Diane Kauper.

"Oh, we just love him!" adds Joan Lenne.

When you consider that he grew up listening to the Beatles and Everly Brothers, it might seem strange that Liquori would want to perform popular music from an era before he was born. But he enjoys mastering guitar stylings that have much in common with the classic jazz he adores. In a way, it transports him back to the mid-'60s in Cedar Grove, N.J., when he was a teen guitarist hoping to study music at a certain famous college across the Hudson.

"It was a very conceivable thing for me to be a musician, because I lived in a neighborhood where at 6 each night, people would be walking up the street with their clarinet or whatever and they'd get on the bus and go play in the Broadway shows," he recalls. "Being a musician didn't seem that weird, and I thought, well, I'll try to go to Juilliard."

A funny thing happened on the way to the fine arts forum. While busy with guitar lessons and studies at Essex Catholic High School, Liquori learned he could run.

He clocked 4:17 in the mile as a sophomore, shocking his track coach, Fred Dwyer, who paid Liquori's parents a visit. "He told them, "Your kid is really good,' " Liquori says. "The only problem is he can't be going out on Friday nights playing in a band and getting up at 7 in the morning and going to these track meets."

Dwyer also said the magic word: scholarship.

Liquori's father, who ran a Montclair, N.J., service station, told his son not to worry about pumping gas that summer. Run, his father said, and Liquori did, hitting high gear in the final stretch of his senior year in 1967. For several weeks of championship track events in California, Liquori neared the 4-minute mark. First came a 4:01, then a 4:00.1. His family had to return to New Jersey, but there was still one more opportunity -- the U.S. Nationals. Jim Ryun would break the world record in the finals, and in eighth place would be a high school kid, Liquori, at 3:59.8. The spectacular finish was the start of everything.

Liquori had never so much as watched the Olympics on TV -- now he was in them. Despite finishing 12th in the 1,500 meters in Mexico City in '68, he became tops in the world in the mile by 1969. Following his much-heralded defeat of Ryun in '71 and a first place in the Pan Am Games, he had high hopes for the '72 Olympics in Munich. But a foot injury derailed him, and he wound up working as a commentator for ABC.

Liquori learned a lot that summer, including how to deal with razzing from the legendary ABC broadcaster Howard Cosell. "It was the first really big thing I'd done, and we're standing down there where the athletes are parading and waiting to go live with Cosell and Jim McKay, and Cosell keeps coming over to me and saying, "Don't worry kid, just because it's live, just because more people will see you now than ever saw Jesus in his life, don't worry about it.' I told McKay, "You gotta get him away from me!' The old announcers, they'd do things to mess you up."

That year, Liquori also moved from Philadelphia, home of college alma mater Villanova, to Gainesville. He entered the University of Florida's graduate journalism program and continued his training in a milder climate.

As a Floridian, Liquori logged his career-best mile at 3:52.2. He took aim at the '76 Games in Montreal in the 5,000 meters, but this time a hamstring injury sidelined him. He was ranked second in the world as the 1980 Games in Moscow approached. However, President Jimmy Carter ordered a U.S. boycott of the competition. Once again, Liquori's Olympic gold hopes were dashed. Angry and disillusioned by the boycott, he retired from competitive running.

When the Olympics came to Los Angeles in 1984, Liquori was back as an ABC commentator. He called the controversial 800-meter race between Mary Decker Slaney and Zola Budd, in which Slaney claimed Budd illegally tripped her and cost her the gold. Liquori sided with Slaney during the live broadcast, but studied the tape that night and decided the issue was not so clear-cut. The next day, he went back on the air and explained how Slaney might have avoided the collision.

He was praised in the media for admitting his error -- yet incurred the ire of Slaney. "Mary Slaney hated me for that, and she didn't speak to me for a decade," he says. "I think she felt I was the reason the U.S. media wasn't on her side. But I think the way she acted, not accepting Budd's apology, is what turned people against her."

NBC got the rights to broadcasting the Olympics in 1988, but Liquori kept working the games for ABC radio, from Seoul to Barcelona to Atlanta. But this year there was an opening on the NBC track commentating team, and the network offered the job to Liquori.

"The opportunity to get back into it now is so exciting, because of the Internet -- there's access to much more information now than when I did it in '84," he says. "I thought, I'd like to get back into this and actually know something, as opposed to having minimal information on some guy from Senegal. I can't wait to get started."

A bronzed Liquori running shoe, commemorating a race he won at Madison Square Garden, rests on a bookshelf in his Gainesville home.

A different show is about to start, and Liquori wouldn't mind waiting just a little. He is pulling up on a recent Wednesday to Hospice of North Central Florida, where he and the Sweet Notes have a 2 p.m. gig. The audience will be ailing senior citizens who don't have much time left. It is his first performance with the group at a hospice.

"I sort of knew this day would come," he says, rolling his amp toward the entrance. "We might all end up in a place like this sooner or later."

The Sweet Notes set up in a large living room area, and on this day, only three elderly female patients are wheeled in for the 45-minute performance. They listen intently to the songs of an era that seems to awaken memories. Liquori performs flawlessly as the women belt out the standards with gusto, and staff members smile and sing along as they pass by.

"When I'm 90 years old and in an old age home, I would want somebody to come and play music for me," Liquori says, packing up his equipment for the ride back home. "I'm glad to be able to do this for them."

Liquori knows there are no guarantees but believes he can live a long life. There have been advances in leukemia research. In the meantime, he keeps fit with jogging and bike racing and devotes much time to fundraising. Ironically, as a favor to a friend, he had agreed to serve as a national spokesman for the Leukemia Society six months before he learned he had the disease. Today, he has helped raise more than $60-million for research through Team in Training, which sponsors individuals racing in marathons.

"There's this one leukemia organization that keeps trying to give me an award as an athlete with the most courageous recovery," he says. "I refuse to take it. I keep saying, "Look, tell 'em nicely, eventually maybe I'll be sick and I'll be the courageous guy, but give it to somebody else.' "

Still, Liquori feels a strong sense of pride about his leukemia fundraising contributions. "I always thought, okay, I have this talent, I can run around the track four times, but that doesn't really contribute anything to society," he says. "Maybe I've inspired some people to get in shape, but basically what I have done is entertainment. So I always wondered, "Why am I famous?' And then it clicked -- maybe this is why I've been a runner, to be able to kick (Team in Training) off and raise money and awareness."

Of course, he is also proud to be the guy whose high school accomplishment somehow endures after 33 years. Last weekend, a runner from York High School in Elmhurst, Ill., Don Sage, was the latest American prep athlete to try to surpass the 4-minute mile. As he neared the finish line, Sage appeared to have succeeded.

The official time flashed on the screen: 4:00.2.

In his home, Liquori watched on TV, strumming his guitar, watching his remarkable feat live on.

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