By Norm Frauenheim-
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — No Opening Day. No Opening Ceremony. No opening bell. I’m almost afraid to open the door. Any door.
It’s hard to know exactly what to do in a world that has suddenly gone dark, locked down and left without much of anything to do other than wait — pray — for the coronavirus pandemic to subside.
I’m bunkered down these days in Flagstaff, an Arizona mountain town a couple of hours north of Phoenix. The Grand Canyon’s south rim is about 60-miles away. It felt like a place to go, perhaps an escape from the daily onslaught of news about something often called COVID-19, suddenly an ominous acronym if there ever was one.
But there’s really no escape. The masks are here, a symbol of the fear that has gripped almost every community, big or small. I saw those masks on a trail, a popular two-mile loop between the snow-capped peaks that soar above Flagstaff’s historic downtown.
It’s a place to walk. It’s also a place to run, another trail that has long attracted Olympic medalists to train at altitude. They’re still here, running for perhaps the same reason I’m walking. We’re trying to get away from the bad news that is always there and always with no apparent end in sight.
Despite the natural beauty, I felt bad for them. Just a couple of weeks ago, they were running for a reason. They were running for a gold-medal finish. But, for now, that’s gone, pulled away by this week’s announcement that the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed until 2021. It’s the right thing to do. Really, it’s the only thing to do. It’s even what they wanted.
It’s what the USA Track and Field asked for in a statement Saturday, the day after USA Swimming asked for a postponement. Some of the world’s best swimmers also train here, indoors at a state-of-the-art Olympic-sized pool at Northern Arizona University. Take a Deep Breath, it says on wall at the pool. You’re at 7,000 feet.
But, truth is, the wind has been knocked out of them. The pool is closed. It looks as though Senator Rand Paul, a former competitive swimmer at Baylor, might have been the last person to get in a few laps. He was spotted in the Senate pool on the day he learned he had tested positive. Now, the Senator has got coronavirus to go along with ignorance. Maybe, the virus subsides in quarantine. But there’s no cure for the ignorance.
Sorry, for the angry aside. But there’s a void. Anger fills it these days. Paul is in the pool and the rest of us are swimming in lies from the White House. About a month and more than a thousand American deaths ago, we were told that the virus was under control. We were told that it would vanish like a miracle.
Bob Arum once told the media: “Yesterday I was lying, today I’m telling you the truth.’’
The President, the Ex-Promoter-In-Chief, acts out that line, from day-to-day-to-damning day, in those press briefings. Too many of those – the lies, not the briefings – sent me out on to the trail like Forrest Gump. At least, I thought about Gump’s line:
“That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So, I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I’d just run across the great state of Alabama. And that’s what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.’’
That’s kind of what those world-class runners are doing on that trail. They don’t know what else to do. Neither do I.
No telling when I’ll hear another opening bell. I thought it might be July 18. That’s when the third Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder was supposed to happen. But now that’s been shelved, Arum told ESPN. The Athletic reports that the new date is Oct. 3. Don’t be surprised if that date changes a few more times. It’s just hard to believe much of anything.
But there is that trail, a place high in the mountains and a place to keep right on going.
