By now Dan O'Brien understands the appeal of his story, its picaresque narrative spiked with trial and error, with mishap and misstep, with personal suffering and extraordinary triumph. He calls it his "rags-to-riches" tale, but having happily embarked on the riches phase, he politely wishes that everyone else would please just move on too. The decathlete is tired of what has become his 11th event, talking about his previous failings--the way he mysteriously flubbed the pole vault in the 1992 Olympic trials, thereby blowing his star turn in Barcelona; the way his college partying sometimes got the best of him. But O'Brien understands too that the past exerts a pull and the future has not quite arrived.
For O'Brien the chance to make a clean break with the past imperfect begins next week in Atlanta on July 31, the first of the decathlon's grueling two days. It is an irony of Olympic fever that one can be, like O'Brien, a three-time world champion and the world record holder in an event and yet, minus that gold, still be only an athlete-in-waiting. But while it is unwise to be too cocksure, O'Brien, who turned 30 last week, is primed. He not only expects the gold but says, "I want to do it right. I want to do it in style, and that's to break the world record."
O'Brien first came to public attention as the Dan half of the catchy 1992 Reebok ad campaign, "Dan and Dave," in which America's two best and most photogenic decathletes, O'Brien and Dave Johnson, were pitted against each other in anticipation of an exciting Barcelona matchup. When, hobbled by poor preparation, O'Brien no-heighted in the pole vault during the Olympic trials, he became, perversely, even more famous. Johnson went on to take the bronze, while O'Brien was left to choke down his embarrassment on the sidelines and serve as a track-and-field commentator for NBC in Barcelona, a task he took on with characteristic good cheer. "It was heartbreaking and crushing," he says now, "but the thing about it was, I would wake up and I could look at myself in the mirror and just go, 'I had a great go at it.' That was the cool thing about it."
Just months after his '92 upset, O'Brien set the world record in the decathlon with 8,891 points at a meet in Talence, France, but no amount of points could make people forget his zero at the Olympic trials. He and Reebok parted company, then he signed on with Nike. Even without the gold to his name, O'Brien is a sponsor's delight, with his radiant good looks--coppery skin, sculpted 6-ft. 2-in., 185-lb. body with an unimaginable 3% of body fat--and affable nature. He already has deals to the tune of $600,000 with Foot Locker, Visa, Ray Ban, Xerox, Juice Bowl and Fuji Film, with bonuses that kick in if he wins the gold.
This time around, at the June Olympic trials, O'Brien had no problem with the pole vault, soaring to a height of 17 ft. 3/4 in., and despite less-than-par performances in the long jump and the 1,500 m, he finished first on the U.S. team, with 90 points to spare. This, say his coaches, is as it should be. "We don't even talk about losing," says Rick Sloan, who has coached O'Brien in the field events for the past six years. "People want him to get all excited about making the team, about getting that monkey off his back, but it was expected."