How Fast Is The Fastest Man Alive?

When Robert Lee Hayes runs you get the impression that cotter pins have come out and dowels loosened and that at the end of the race there will be sections of Bob Hayes—elbows, kneecaps, forearms—strewn along the track like the Florida Keys. Churning along, his pigeon toes making divots and his arms effecting great uppercuts, Hayes does not run a race so much as he appears to beat it to death, or it him. For all that, Bob Hayes arrives. All of him always arrives. And the wonder then is not the completion of the trip so much as the speed of it. People just cannot believe how quickly this young man gets from one place to another.

As an example, take the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference track and field championships two years ago in Atlanta. Hayes runs for (and plays football for and attends classes at) Florida A&M University, and that day, as a 19-year-old sophomore, he ran 100 yards with more impatience than usual. Among the judges, presumably atremble at the sight, there were watches stopped at 8.9 seconds and 9.0 seconds. This was impossible, of course. Nobody would ever believe such a thing. Hayes's time rounded off to a sensational but uninflammatory 9.3 seconds.

Since then Hayes has pretty well indicated that he could do 9.3 running on Jones Beach in combat boots. Watches have become bolder—five times he has been clocked at 9.1, which is the accepted world record—and last week Atlanta headline writers were bold, too ( HAYES GOES FOR 9 FLAT), as he returned for the conference meet. Bold but uninformed. Odds were enormous against a record, because competition was flimsy (it is a league of small Negro schools dominated by A&M), and when preliminaries were completed the cinder track at Cheney Stadium, not a good facility anyway, was gingerbread. More likely, he would do 9.4 or 9.5, looking over his shoulder.

After running a decisive anchor leg on the winning A&M 440-yard relay team, Hayes settled into the blocks for the 100. Settled is not quite the word. He was still fussing with his fingers at the set position when the gun went off. Caught there and slow getting out, he was an inconspicuous third, but inside of 20 yards he had caught up, and he had shoved his powerful chest ahead after 25. The crowd, bunched up along the rail as if the stadium had tilted the moment Hayes's name was announced, woooooed him down the line. When he won there was a light wind in his face and an indecently large gap between his heels and the No. 2 man. The judges confidently clocked him out at 9.2.

On a fast rubberized track, pushed (if that is possible) by a Henry Carr or a Harry Jerome or a Larry Questad, it is reasonable to surmise that Hayes at that moment would have become the first man to run 100 yards in less than nine seconds. He will do it one of these days. A 9.2 on gingerbread with no real competition tells you how close he is.

Later in the meet Hayes won the 220-yard dash in 21.2 and, as a concession to the clinical studies of his bright young coach, Dick Hill, agreed to run one of the legs of the mile relay.

"I run 440 yards only one other time in my life," said Hayes, grinning. "Please have a drink of water ready on the back-stretch."

"Can Hayes run a quarter mile?" the A&M football coach, Jake Gaither, was asked in the infield, where he was conducting a Bob-Hayes-can-do-anything seminar.

"Just watch him," said Gaither.

Hayes was fifth when he got the baton on the second leg. When he gave it up Florida A&M had the lead, and ultimately it had the victory. Hayes ran his quarter in a creditable 48.6.