Renaldo Nehemiah Book Update
by Steve McGill
It’s been a while since I gave an update on the book I’m writing on Renaldo Nehemiah, but I’ve been making progress. In the last update several months ago, I had just finished writing the first draft of the chapter about his legal battle with the IAAF to gain reinstatement of his amateur status after he had spent five seasons with the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. Nehemiah’s legal battle coincided with his football career, and his ultimate victory led to his comeback as a track athlete. As of now, I have written the chapter about his comeback, another chapter about his post-athletic career as an agent, husband, divorcée, and father of two daughters. I am currently working on a chapter dedicated exclusively to his relationship with his most well-known client, Justin Gatlin. After that, there will be one more chapter to write — about his current life and current family situation. After that, I’ll need to go back and edit and revise the whole manuscript. Meanwhile, I have contacted McFarland Publishing Company, who published my first biography, on 1972 Olympic champion Rodney Milburn, and they have expressed interest in working with Renaldo and me on this one.
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So wheels are turning, even if they’re turning slowly. In this article, I want to discuss the content of the two chapters I have completed since my last update.
Renaldo’s comeback to the track was pretty much defined by injury. His football career had done some serious damage to his body. He had sat out his entire last year with the 49ers due to a hip injury. Besides that, he had suffered a litany of relatively “minor” injuries that wouldn’t be considered minor to a track athlete. Plus, he had put on about 25 pounds of muscle that he needed for football, but that he would need to shed in his return to the track.
The sport that Renaldo returned to was not the same sport he had left behind. Professionalism had finally found its way into track and field in an above ground manner, beginning at the inaugural World Championships in 1983, with prize money and prizes being given to event winners. The best athletes could also expect to receive appearance fees and prize money from meet promoters in the European circuit without needing to wait in a long line outside a hotel room to receive payment under the table. Track stars were a real thing now, with athletes like Carl Lewis leading the way in bringing the sport to international prominence after he won four gold medals in the 2984 Olympics, making him the first athlete since Jesse Owens to do so.
In the 110 hurdles, Greg Foster was still the guy to beat, but he had yet to run any faster than he had against Renaldo. The young Roger Kingdom was another force to be reckoned with, as he had defeated Foster in the 1984 Olympics, but had been injured often since then. Tonie Campbell was still a factor, and there were several younger guys who were showing potential.
Long story short, Renaldo did have his moments of greatness between 1987-1991, but he never recaptured his past glory. Because of the damage done to his body in his football years, hurdling was hard work for him now. He had lost the fluidity and ease of motion that had set him apart from all the others. And every time it looked like he was about to get back to that super-elite level, another injury would come along, forcing him to rehab for another few weeks or months. So he was losing to hurdlers whom he would’ve blasted in his pre-football days, and it was quite frustrating for him.
In 1989, he watched from the bleachers as Kingdom broke his world record in the same stadium he had set it eight years earlier. Renaldo had been scheduled to run, but didn’t because the meet director refused to pay him as much as he felt he deserved. Renaldo’s greatest comeback moment occurred a year later, when he won in Zurich in 13.20, and defeated Kingdom, Foster, and Campbell in the process, and received a huge ovation from the Zurich crowd,who remembered him from his glory days and still held him as a beloved figure.
One of the most powerful moments in the book comes just after the end of Renaldo’s athletic career, when he and his brother Dion found out during a family reunion that their father, Earl Nehemiah, was not their biological father. Though Renaldo had heard plenty of whispers in the past, he had always ignored them and had just assumed that some extended family members simply liked to gossip.
Finding out that his dad was not his biological dad did not change his love and respect for his dad. But it did hurt to know that his biological father was out there somewhere and had never bothered to reach out. Renaldo had become an international sports star, so it wasn’t like he was hard to find. Yet despite all his success, his biological father had never reached. Even though Renaldo was 34 at the time, it hurt the same as it would if he had been seven.
In the chapter about his post-athletic career, much is discussed about his path towards becoming an athlete representative, and some of the relationships with some of those athletes such as Perdita Felicien, Allyson Felix, Allen Johnson, Mark Crear, and others. Also discussed at length is his relationship with his two daughters, who both struggled after Renaldo and their mom got divorced when both children were very young, but old enough to understand what was going on. Renaldo wanted this to be a book about his life, not just about his athletic exploits, which is why the personal element is such a significant component of the story.
So again, the chapter I’m writing now is about his relationship with Justin Gatlin, as it wouldn’t have been feasible to squeeze in such a discussion with discussion of the other athletes Renaldo represented. Gatlin, as you’re probably well aware, was a very controversial figure because of his positive drug test in 2006, after he had risen to the top of the sprint wars. Renaldo and Gatlin had, and have, a very close mentor/mentee relationship, as Renaldo has remained loyal to Gatlin through the worst of times. His loyalty has even stained his own reputation, as there are those in the track community who felt, and feel, that representing a drug cheat is equal to condoning the cheating itself. But Renaldo, who is a very religious man, believes that people who fall deserve second chances. Ironically, Renaldo was the one who was pushing Gatlin to leave the Sprint Capitol training group well before the positive test occurred, because other athletes in that group (most notably Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery) had been implicated in the Balco scandal that ensnared baseball legend Barry Bonds. But things had been going so well that Gatlin, regrettably, didn’t listen.
So there’s my latest update on the book. If you’ve never seen footage of Nehemiah in his glory days, check out the video below that’s on my YouTube channel.
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