The following is an excerpt on track star Gwen Gardner from the book "BOYCOTT: Stolen Dreams of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games" by Tom and Jerry Caraccioli, with the foreword by Vice President Walter F. Mondale. More info on the book can be found at
So far in Gwen Gardner’s life following the 1980 Olympics, the 400-meter runner has not been forced to divulge her past to a certain population she deals with on a regular basis.
In Los Angeles, where Gardner grew up and still resides, high-speed chases are a part of everyday life. And so, when criminals decide to escape the scene of a crime on foot, the question that begs an answer is: If those
criminals knew the background of the officer they were trying to out-run, Deputy Sheriff of Los Angeles County Gwen Gardner, would they decide they’re better off putting their hands in the air and surrendering before succumbing
to the inevitable? Criminals in Los Angeles County would find themselves out of breath, out of energy and out of luck after trying to compete with the world-class deputy
sheriff. Gardner, who has worked in law enforcement since 1988, has 20 years of experience dealing with bad guys. And she knows a thing or two about the psychology of dealing with them, because of her athletic career.
“The mental toughness that is created gives you the discipline to go through the [police] academy and the whole process,” Gardner explains.
“Athletics gives you a mental toughness. When you’re tired, it changes your perspective. When you’re used to being tired because of running and competing,
you find a way to get through it. Like situations where you work in a jail environment where criminals are arrested and housed. Or the way
some of them may or may not talk to you. Some of them may challenge you to fight.”
Gardner has never been one to be shy about a fight or a challenge. As a youngster, she dreamed of competing in the Olympics after watching her idol Barbara Ferrell win a silver medal in the 200-meter run at the 1968 Summer
Games in Mexico City and a gold in the 100-meter at the ’72 Games in Munich. “I remember watching the 1968 Olympics on television. In my mind I said, I want to do that. I was eight at the time and didn’t voice it to
anyone until I was in junior high. When I was 14, I told my parents I wanted to run track when I got into high school.”
The halls of Gardner’s Crenshaw High School were not absent of big dreamers and talented athletes who would dot the playing fields and athletic landscapes of the U.S. in the 1980s and beyond. Darryl Strawberry, a top
Major League Baseball draft pick and multiple Word Series champion, attended Crenshaw, as did other future professional athletes.
“Darryl came out two years after I did,” remembers Gardner. “Johnny Gray was a four-time Olympian [1984, ’88, ’92, ’96] and ran the 800-meter.
He stills holds the American record in the 800. A basketball player that went to the NBA was Marques Johnson. Baseball player Chris Brown and football
player Wendell Tyler of the 49ers and Rams all went to Crenshaw.”
While in high school, Gardner finally told her parents about her aspirations of someday making an Olympic team. “I didn’t act upon that thought process
until I turned 15,” she says. “That’s when I joined the track team at Crenshaw.”
After her math teacher, Mos Benmosche, suggested as much, Gardner decided the 400-meter would be the event that would take her toward her goal. “I started running and training for the 400 as a 16-year-old junior.”
Following her junior season, Gardner’s progress was attracting attention.
“As a junior in high school I made the Five Nations international competition,” Gardner recalls. “It was the United States, Japan, New Zealand, Australia
and Canada. I ran the 400-meter on that team in 1977.” It was her first taste of international competition and she knew she wanted more.
As a senior in high school, Gardner finished second in the 400 at the California State Championships. Her coach, Fred Jones, who also coached Gardner’s club team—Los Angeles Mercurettes—was renowned for sending
his athletes to the Olympics. His runners have competed in the Olympic Games from 1960 to 1980 and again in 2000. Jones was no stranger to Olympic-caliber talent. And in Gardner, he saw that talent.
Gardner’s focus was on making the Olympic team in 1980. Two-a-day workouts, hills, beach work, running in the sand, intervals, weight training,diet regime and competing in meets across the country and around the world
prepared her for getting to the 1980 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. Her quest began with a series of races in which the track athletes had to
run a qualifying standard in their respective events. Next came four rounds of competition to get to the finals. After the finals, if they qualified, they were
invited to the Olympic Trials.
Gardner was invited. And then the 19-year-old toed the blocks and exploded to a second-place finish and a berth on the 1980 U.S. Olympic Summer Games track and field team. But when she crossed the finish line, it was
already with the knowledge of the boycott. “It was bittersweet,” Gardner says with a snicker. “By then I knew, even though I obtained the goal I had strived
for as a child—I would always be an Olympian just like all the other athletes who competed—[that] it would have an asterisk because we didn’t actually go over to Moscow and compete.”
Like her 1980 Olympic teammates, Gardner set her sights on the 1984 Summer Games. Those would be held in her backyard of Los Angeles, and Gardner wanted to be a part of them. But before that could happen, she would have to earn a living during the four-year Olympic cycle. Earning that
living would change the course of her Olympic destiny.
“I was playing a halfback stunt-double for a movie about women playing against male football players—‘Oklahoma City Dolls’—and I broke my leg