July 23, 2000, Sacramento, Ca. — Today at the U.S.A. Olympic Trials for Track and Field, Gainesville, Florida’s own Clark sisters made history, just like we hoped they would. Joetta Clark qualified for her fourth Olympics, running just behind her younger sister, Hazel, and sister-in-law, Jearl.
As her doctor, I went out to the trials to tend to last minute needs Joetta may have had. On race day I found her at the U.S.A.Olympic Trials Treatment Center for Athletes on the bottom floor of the official hotel for the renown competing athletes.
As we’d arranged I got there just after her brother, University of Florida Track Coach J.J. Clark had worked on her to stretch her out. As luck and traffic would have it, we connected there in what looked like a cross between a M.A.S.H. unit and a stable for human race horses. Here the grooms were body work practitioners of various disciplines, including two other chiropractors like myself, and the patients were our country’s best track athletes exuding health and fitness. This was a temple of wellness care if there ever was one.
In the previous week leading up to tonight’s successful race, I worked with Joetta at my private practice back at our mutual home of Gainesville. Today’s office visit was neither the usual office or at all private. Prone and supine athletes laid recumbent on a dozen or so tables while their personnel and the provided professionals worked vigorously on their pre-event athlete clients.
“You did a lot more on me today than you ever did in your office!” Joetta remarked after our session. As a competitive miler, all I could explain was, “I know about race days.” I flew to Sacramento to help Joetta before one of the biggest challenges of her life because of who she is: an awesome athlete and a humble person. But, also for another very personal reason. I needed to gaze into the eyes of an Olympian just before success.
It was a kind of soul nourishment I knew I needed to succeed in my own personal goals, at this late stage of my own racing career. As deeply as I must go inward to find what I need to succeed on race day, I got to travel that distance into Joetta Clark’s eyes today. It happened just before we got started. I asked her what concerns she had (expecting to hear of no complaints whatsoever). She stunned me with: “My legs feel kinda yicky.”
No way! I clapped a firm right hand squarely down atop her left shoulder and stopped her cold. My doctor nodding changed to head shaking, mind changing, absolute denial. Keeping my eyes focused on hers, I stopped time and told her, “I’ll tell you what your legs feel like, they feel the way they do before they do something good.”
That’s when I saw what I was looking for. Staring straight into her dark eyes I beheld an Olympian recommit to what would be. She affirmed: “Right.” After all that, I started checking her over from head to toe, adjusting what needed it along the way. “What do you think about that computerized thing that chiropractor has over there?” she asked me as I finished. “Forget it. You’re ready now.” She was.
Joetta Clark qualified as our country’s representative in the women’s 800 meter track race in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia later this Summer. Only her younger sister, “Peachy” Hazel Clark and sister-in-law Jearl Miles Clark, J.J.’s wife, bested her time today. But today was about making the Olympic team. Now the three sisters will face the rest of the world’s best together. That’s a first in Olympic history.
Ten days before her race I asked Joetta who was going to make it to the Olympics. I remembered her reply as I watched her race her way into her 4th Olympics tonight. She thought it over and agreed with herself that “those who were the most humble” would make the team.
Remember the beatitudes gospel? “The last shall be first.” Joetta came from last place to grab the last place that would allow the whole Team Clark to go to the Olympics. In character she would later admit she knew she was the “weak link.”
How close was it? It was a photo finish. In the last 100 meters Joetta ran “like my life depended on it.” In the replay on television millions could barely see how it all came to pass even on super motion and had to wait with Team Clark for the still frame photo finish.
Drawing on 27 years of track racing experience and some excellent pre-race chiropractic care Joetta performed the required miracle. Her steady close on the would be Olympian Meredith Rainey-Valmon would not in itself be enough.
With what seemed like about 18 inches before the finish line, Joetta did this wild twisting, lunging jab of her right shoulder to break the photo beam before Valmon would but one inch later and in less time than the one-hundredth second recorded as their difference.
So total was this desperate act that the photo finish shows Joetta’s entire left leg somehow kicking outward and parallel to the track. This only after Joetta willed Valmon inexpiably to move out of her own lane opening the path both needed to secure the coveted 3rd place and a place on the Olympic team. All that in the dizzying anoxic state of a 3: something mile pace. Her final time was a 1:58.–. Her lifetime best (and at one time women world record) is 1:57.
Now Joetta is about to turn 38. Do you want to know what that age means? That means that’s the age Joetta is when she’s about to do something good. Earlier today, along side my portable chiropractic table, I confessed, “You know, I prayed on the way over here, Joetta.” “Oh, thank you. Just keep praying for me to be patient and run my race.” “No, I prayed for me. To team with you to get just the right things done today to get you ready. Now you are. It’s all up to you now. You are ready.” She is.
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Thank you to Dr. John J. Johnston and the other chiropractors who are serving our world’s olympians. We appreciate your efforts.
planetc1.com-news @ 7:08 am | Article ID: 965138893
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