Jane Saville

If both your feet are off the ground, you're running. That was something Australian race walker Jane Saville forgot as she neared the end of her 20-km race. In first place and only 200 m from a triumphal finish inside Stadium Australia, Saville was dramatically, almost cruelly--but correctly--disqualified from the race for running.

"I could hear the crowd," she said afterward, "and I could see them at the top of the grandstand...and I was thinking, 'Wow, this is going to be the most awesome experience of my life.'" At that moment a judge stepped out in front of her and raised a red card. Saville's race was ended. "No, no, no, not me!" she screamed. Crying uncontrollably, she fled.

A walker infringing the rules is cautioned twice, then shown the red card. China's Liu Hongyu, the 1999 world champion, and Italy's Elisabetta Perrone, who won silver in the 10-km at Atlanta, were also red-carded. When Saville too was tossed, China's Wang Liping was left to take the gold.

Saville's coach, Ron Weigel, behaved as theatrically as his protege. He wept, threw a chair and even blamed politics for Saville's elimination. When she had calmed down, Saville realized that race walking--already subject to criticism as an Olympic sport--had not been well served by her distress. "I love this sport," she avowed. "If nothing else, it makes you the toughest person around."