One morning in December, the unsuspecting Harlan Brown, head track coach at his small liberal college, arrives at his office to find a disturbing surprise waiting for him.

Three top U.S. runners are there, refugees from Oregon State, where they'd just been kicked off the track team for "disciplinary reasons." They are friends, and hitchhiked across the country to find Harlan. Their names: mercurial loudmouth Vince Matti, 22, 2nd fastest U.S. miler. Jacques LaFont, 23, quiet and nervous, a top middle-distance runner. And Billy Sive, 22, handsome even with his mop of hippie hair and granny glasses. Billy is a promising but unproven and problematical talent in the 5000 and 10,000 meter double. These two classic runs constitute a double, one of the great challenges at the Olympics, in a class with the pentathlon. No American had ever won double gold in that event.

The three young men tell Harlan they want to attend Prescott College and get on his team.

As he interviews them, Harlan is deeply uneasy -- he's not sure he wants these three "discipline cases" messing up his own team. They're clearly the kind of top runners that he and his little college had dreamed of fielding. But his uneasiness turns to shock when the boys put all their cards on the table and tell him that they were canned at Oregon because coach Gus Lindquist found out they were gay. Vince and Jacques are actually in a relationship. Billy and Vince are close friends. They don't say so openly, but it's clear that the three boys may have come to Prescott because they'd heard rumors that Harlan was gay.

Harlan hides his shock, wrestling with his decision. To buy time, he takes the three young men out to the snowy track to watch them work out.

At this point we get Harlan’s back story. Once married and a Marine, now divorced and still a jarhead in civilian life. He is deeply conflicted and closeted about his sexuality. He is handsome, outwardly poker-faced and disciplined, inwardly complex, passionate, in turmoil. He has never cried in his life. We learn that his career has been a case of "almost" -- narrowly missing his own shot at the Olympics as a miler, later as a Penn State coach. He was unfairly dismissed from Penn because of false allegations of sexual overtures to a runner (the student later admitted to lying). Harlan could have fought his dismissal in court, with the help of a gay civil-rights attorney who offered to help, but he was afraid to accept the help, and simply resigned.

At first Harlan is freaked out by the situation. If he takes the three boys onto his team, rumors will fly. Eventually his own orientation will be questioned by the sports world. Here at Prescott, he is out to Joe and Marian Prescott, the liberal/progressive president and vice president of the college, who hired him knowing what happened at Penn but believe in his integrity and talent. But Harlan is not out to administration or students or his team, let alone to the sports world. He continues to wrestle with his own ingrained Protestant Puritanism. To his runners he is a man of mystery, tough but fair, whose ambition is to build this obscure college team to regional, perhaps national prominence.

As Harlan watches Billy run on the snowy track, he is secretly enthralled by Billy's raw natural talent. He notices that Billy is a natural front runner. With an icy calm, he puts himself out in front, setting the pace, instead of playing it safer, sitting off the pace and "kicking" from the rear at the last moment. It's always a risky strategy if you set the pace too fast or too slow. Billy seems like a loveable and admirable human being, the kind of man that Harlan had dreamed of being able to love. But he immediately represses his feelings. Now, talking to the boys, Harlan puts two and two together and realizes that Billy's father, John Sive, was the attorney who offered to handle Harlan's Penn case. Surely the boys know his secret.

Later that morning, president Joe Prescott quietly tells Harlan that the school will support the boys and Harlan all the way to the Olympics. At this Harlan's dreams of coaching an Olympic gold medalist stir again. His only decent runner at that moment is a female college senior, Betsy Heden, a sprinter. Besides, he owes Joe and Marian for giving him a second chance.

Reluctantly he tells Joe Prescott that he'll take the three young men onto the team. That night, in a private pep talk, he tells the three of them that he expects them to do exactly what they're told -- that they're to leave all the sports politics to him. They must do everything by the book, to break no rules, because the AAU will use the rules to keep them off the track if word gets around that they're gay.

As the spring semester comes in, the "three musketeers" settle in. Betsy Heden becomes Billy's best friend and staunchest booster on campus. But the three super-burners jar the Prescott team. A few of the boys are jealous of the attention they're getting.

Coach Brown and Billy Sive have their defenses up as they spar with each other. Billy is irritated by Harlan's Marine drill-sergeant manner and old-fashioned political conservatism. Billy is self-accepting, open, liberal, idealistic, charismatic. He loves the self expression of dance, follows Buddhism and has his serious liberal/leftie side -- wants to change the world politically. Ambitious and focused as an athlete, he trains hard -- too hard -- and refuses to follow Harlan's orders to get into a more sensible training program.

Harlan is constantly infuriated by Billy’s defiance of discipline and common sense. Harlan is afraid that Billy will break himself down through over-training. His sensible program is calculated carefully to have Billy breaking 28 minutes in the 10,000 meter in time to qualify for the Montreal Olympics in a year and a half. To win the gold means that Billy will have to beat Finnish gold medalist Armas Sepponan, who has run a 27:28.

What everyone else on campus sees, is that coach Harlan and the new runner Billy appear to hate each other's guts.

During the holidays, on visits to New York City, Harlan Brown finally gets to know Billy's dad. John is the genial but cutthroat litigator, a divorced man who got custody of Billy when his son was a baby, and later remarried. Harlan hears vivid stories about Billy's stepmother, Frances, now gone from the scene, and learns with surprise that Frances was a male-to-female transgendered person, who transitioned so successfully that John was able to have a high-profile career and maintain an airtight cover as a heterosexual. Frances and John raised Billy in this highly unconventional but loving relationship.

John thinks highly of Harlan and has no major problem with the possibility of a relationship between Harlan and his son -- indeed, he pegs the ex-Marine, with his powerful sense of duty and responsibility, as an excellent catch. He IS concerned over the heartbreak and rebelliousness and risk that Billy is putting himself through.

As the year gets under way, conflicts escalate between Harlan and Billy. Harlan is determined not to have a repeat of Penn State, so he is obsessively prim and proper and keeps his growing feelings for Billy at bay. Meanwhile Billy keeps on over-training, and gets so willful and impudent that one day during training, Harlan hauls off and slaps him across the face military-style to get him in line. The move doesn't work, and the other team members are so shocked at Harlan's action that he is forced to apologize to Billy.

Finally, in late spring at the Drake Relays, Billy is so over-trained and runs so badly that it's clear his Olympic potential might be going up in smoke.

In despair, Harlan and John take him to New York City for the weekend to try to talk to him and get to the bottom of the problem. There, in a rundown gay movie theater downtown, with the two of them ignoring the movie, Billy finally breaks down and lets Harlan know that he has been fighting his own feelings -- that he is in love with Harlan. When Harlan recovers from his surprise, he has to call on all his courage, as if he was charging up Hamburger Hill with an M-16 in hand. Reluctantly, awkwardly, he admits to Billy that he feels the same way. There in the dark movie theater, they kiss for the first time.

Harlan still feels horribly conflicted. But it is dawning on him that the only way Billy will get to the Olympics is through their relationship, and through a greater trust of his better training methods. Back at Prescott the next day, during a training run that the two of them take through the lush green woods outlying the campus, amid a rush of feeling and decision, the two of them finally decide to make love for the first time.

Harlan feels obliged to tell Joe and Marian about the start of relationship. They tell Harlan that it's he and Billy’s business.

Now that the romantic rush is over, reality sets in again. Harlan is dreading the possible exposure that lies ahead and he wants to keep their relationship in the closet. He says they can't live together for the time being. Billy is crushed, but understands why, so he continues living in the dorm.

Things are not yet evened out between the two. Harlan can be jealous, wondering if Billy and Vince had ever had a thing together. Billy denies it. Billy still is addicted to over-training, and finally comes down with a stress fracture that red-shirts him for the rest of that year.

Meanwhile, Vince has worked hard -- he captures #1 U.S. best time in the mile.

Jacques is struggling with some emotional issues -- Vince loves to flirt. He even tries to flirt with Harlan, who rebuffs him coldly. So Jacques is not running too well. For the moment, Vince looks to be Harlan's only Olympic hopeful.

At graduation, the "three musketeers" get their diplomas. Prescott College offers them faculty positions to help develop a gay-studies program (a new thing in those days), so they can support themselves and have a facility where they can train for the Olympics. Betsy has graduated too, and Harlan hires her as his assistant coach. She has come out as the campus lesbian and firebrand activist, and will also be involved in the gay-studies program.

That summer Harlan wants to take his three runners on the European tour, so they will get some solid experience with the track tactics of veteran European runners. He has a hard time getting permission to go from the AAU, who are always controlling about every aspect of an athlete's life. Harlan begins to suspect that some AAU officials know about his relationship with Billy.

But finally the four of them get to western Europe, and have a wonderful time in that continent where people are a bit less homophobic. Harlan turns 40, and celebrates his birthday with his three protégés. The three young men are running well. Billy doesn't run into Armas Seponnan, but he is starting to show signs that he might fulfill his gold-medal potential.

As the fall semester begins, the Joe and Marion Prescott have supported the Olympic bid by installing a modern new Tartan track -- the new age of synthetic surfaces in sports has begun. Billy's 10,000-meter times begin to comedown.

But out in the track world, the rumors are finally circulating -- fueled by the spectacle of Harlan traveling Europe with the three boys all summer. The rumors were started by Oregon coach Gus Lindquist, who still has a grudge against the three refugees. Track people are hearing whispers of talk that Prescott has three queer runners and maybe a queer coach too.

Jacque LaFont can't take the intensified scrutiny of his private life, so he finally drops out of running. He and Vince break up. This triggers Harlan's jealousy further -- he is always afraid that Billy and Vince had a thing in the past, and fears that Billy might go roving back to Vince now, behind Harlan's back.

Harlan still hangs onto his belief that he can keep everything under wraps and under control -- till later that fall, at a trackwriters' lunch at Mama Leone's Restaurant in New York City, attended by local press and coaches. His sole ally at the lunch is Aldo Franconi, an old friend, a liberal-spirited AAU official who supports the athletes' rights movement. Aldo knows what is going on between Harlan and Billy, and warns him that trouble is in the wind. At the lunch, when Harlan gets up to talk about his team and the coming season, the reporters' questions are so edged and insinuating -- though stopping short of specific accusations -- that Harlan finally realizes that Aldo is right. It's only a question of time before his cover is blown.

Finally, at the 15K national cross country championships, held in New York City's Van Cortlandt Park, the roof finally falls in. It's a training race for Billy, and he wins it easily in a driving rain, all the runners covered in mud. After the race, a tabloid reporter comes up and finally asks Billy the direct question. "Are you gay?" Always the rebel, Billy answers honestly. The reporter questions Vince next; true to style, Vince blurts the truth. Emboldened by the young men's response, Harlan finally puts his life on the line and doesn't deny it either.

The next day there is an insinuating item in the National Intelligencer. Not a bold statement, just an insinuation. In those days, everybody still tried to avoid mentioning such matters. The sports world is in shock.

Harlan and the three runners are now out to everyone on the Prescott campus. But this is a liberal school, so -- outside of a few grumbles from parents -- nobody makes much of a fuss.

It's now time to qualify for the Olympic team. Vince's and Billy's training schedules are pointed towards the Olympic trials in July in Los Angeles. But they start running into more and more "political" problems. Evidently the AAU political machine, is beginning to grind against them. Vince is suddenly slapped with charges that he took money from meet promoters -- a big no-no in those days, when amateur athletes could not make a single penny off their sport for fear of jeopardizing their amateur status. Unfortunately Vince HAD taken money before he came to Prescott. His lame defense is that everybody was taking it.

Aldo Franconi does what he can to run interference. But it's too late for Vince -- his AAU card is taken away. Broken-hearted, Vince joins the pro track tour. Now Billy is Harlan's sole hope for a medal.

Harlan can't draw back now. All he can do is stay alert for every unfriendly move by the AAU authorities, who are trying to trip Billy up with regulations and regulations rather than encourage any open discussions about gay athletes.

Meanwhile Harlan's training program is finally working; Billy's times in both the 5000 and 10,000 are dropping. He finally breaks 28 minutes in the 10,000.

In the spring, taking a last break before the Olympic trials, Billy and Harlan spend a weekend at Fire Island Pines with a wealthy friend who is a bestselling author, Steve Goodnight. The two men manage to have a few happy days to themselves with no one watching them. Harlan, ever the sentimental traditionalist, wishes they could get married. Billy the new ager, sees no point in ceremonies. They do discuss having a child -- a very new concept in those days -- if only they can find the right surrogate mother to help them achieve this.

But back at Prescott, as the political pressures build, the two men have their worst fight ever. Cause: Harlan's jealousy. Billy disappears off the campus. John and Harlan go looking for him, and find him in a movie theater in New York. They are compelled into a frank talk about their attitudes, and Harlan is suddenly embarrassed by his lack of trust in Billy, realizing that it could destroy everything. Billy, for his part, begins to understand a little about Harlan's hunger for the traditional forms.

Reconciliation takes the form of a commitment ceremony, which they do in Harlan's yard on the campus, with a few friends in attendance. The words of the vows are put together from Old Testament and Buddhist texts. After the ceremony, Billy moves out of the dorm and into Harlan's small house on campus. Word of this "marriage" gets out, and sports traditionalists who hear about it are nauseated. Harlan and Billy take the next tentative step towards parenthood by storing some semen samples at a sperm bank.

Attempts to "get Billy" through rules infractions are intensified.

But finally it is July, and Billy is breaking 27:40 in the 10,000, and Harlan and Aldo have done a masterful job at preventing any political maneuvers from working. Everybody in the track and field world are on their way to the Trials in L.A. The sports world is aghast. Awful as it may seem, an "avowed homosexual" may be about to make the U.S. team. To make things worse, this queer is being coached by another "avowed homosexual" and something has to be done to stop this.

The Trials are a circus, echoing with uproar. The stands are packed with Billy's detractors and Billy's supporters. Indeed, Billy's sunny charismatic personality is suddenly beginning to have a real mass of fans -- students and liberals who feel that he embodies everything they're fighting for in American life . All Billy has to do is place 3rd to get on the team. In the 5000 meter he does that. But during the 10,000 run, another runner deliberately fouls Billy by "spiking" him (stepping on his foot with a spiked track shoe) and he falls. He scrambles up, but is unable to catch up all the way, and places fourth -- one place out of qualifying. It means that he will lose his shot at the double in Montreal.

Harlan is furious, and insists that the officials view the videotape (a new thing in those days), which clearly shows Billy being fouled. At first they refuse. There is a huge uproar, with John Sive making legal threats and the stands are in turmoil -- conservative track fans baiting the liberals who support Billy. The officials refuse to disqualify the runner who fouled the "queer."

But finally the liberal media are demanding to see the tape. With the Trials' "integrity" at stake, the officials are compelled to give in. The runner who fouled Billy is disqualified, moving Billy up to third place...and the Olympic team.

On the eve of the Olympics, one more ugly ploy is tried. The USOC complain to the International Olympic Committee that Billy violated his amateur status by taking a teacher salary for the gay-studies program. They point out that the job made it possible for him to train on campus, hence constituted direct financial support.

Billy and Harlan have to fly to Geneva to appear at an IOC closed hearing. And there they learn that they have a new ally. Athlete Armas Seponnan himself, a proud gutsy individual, shows up unexpectedly and tells the IOC that he will withdraw from the Games if Billy is disqualified for this ridiculous reason. The Finnish champion proposes that he and Billy will have their own match races over those distances somewhere else in the world, with full media coverage, as a way of thumbing their noses at the Olympics' amateur rules.

The IOC, of course, are not prepared to let Billy and Armas do this stunt, and Billy clinches their decision with a passionate speech . He is cleared to run.

Now the homophobes are saying, Okay, sure, let him run -- he's queer, so he's not capable of winning anyway. Only a real man can win something like the 5 and 10,000 double.

To come out after you've won a gold medal would be one thing. But to arrive at the Games before you win anything, while trailing clouds of open homosexual notoriety and passionate controversy, is quite another. No athlete has ever done this. In the story, Billy Sive does. Montreal is tense, with memories of Munich and Mexico City in the air, and threats that Quebec separatists might bomb the Games, and heavy security everywhere.

In spite of the incredible pressure, Billy conducts himself with the same controlled calm that he usually shows in a race. More athletes rally to his support. Though the U.S. team is bitterly divided about him, with the conservative athletes saying they're nauseated, the majority of the team members side with Billy and elect him the flagbearer for the opening ceremonies.

In the Olympic Village, he wins people's hearts by trying to avoid attention. Armas Seponnan continues to be the friendly rival, and the two of them play chess, taking witty little jabs at each other. Coaches don't stay in the Olympic Village, so Harlan rooms at a Montreal hotel with John Sive, Vince, Jacques, Betsy, the Prescotts, Steve Goodnight, Aldo and all the rest of Billy's posse, who have all come to show support.

Finally it's the day of the 10,000 meter. The race is close, but Billy turns in a tactically perfect performance, and burns off Seponnan's kick. He wins by half a second. The stadium is in pandemonium. And then the young "queer" is standing on the victory podium, where he and Harlan had dreamed of seeing him stand, with the gold medal around his neck.

Amid the post-10,000 uproar, Billy is already showing signs of weariness with all the celebrity. He tells Harlan that he can hardly wait to go home and take up teaching again.
But there is still the 5000 to run in a week, and the double to be challenged.

As the race starts, and Harlan and all the supporters watch anxiously from the stands, Billy seems a little less certain of his strategy. Armas tucks in just behind him, and the two of them grind out lap after lap, almost tied together. Then, as Armas launches his kick and moves out to pass Billy, Billy makes a huge effort and accelerates too. They are coming down to the finish with Billy still ahead. Armas is suddenly broken and falling back a little, and it is clear that Billy is going to win...when suddenly Billy slumps and collapses to the track.

Harlan is aghast. What has happened? A heart attack? As an astonished Armas crosses the finish line, staggering with exhaustion, Harlan is already pushing his way through the crowd, down to trackside.

The medics are already down there, busy over Billy. Harlan fights his way through security with Marine ferocity, and gets there just in time to hear the chief medic say that Billy has a huge bullet wound to the head. When they turn him over, it is hideously visible. He is already dead, and his broken glasses lie on the track.

In the ensuing confusion, it becomes clear that the unthinkable, yet clearly logical thing has happened -- the end result of all the hatred and disapproval launched at Billy for months. Evidently a gunman managed to smuggle a weapon into the stadium, perhaps weeks ago, and made his own statement of disapproval by shooting Billy just as he was about to win. He had to be a professional sniper to have gotten a head shot at such a distance.

Amid the furor and media attention, the athletes' reactions around the world, the outrage and grief of all his family and supporters and associates, the identity of the shooter comes clear. Canadian police arrest an American war veteran who had been a sniper in Vietnam, an ultraconservative and fundamentalist guy who believed that God sent him on a new mission, to rid the world of a new enemy, namely homosexuals..

Meanwhile Harlan finds himself stunned into dry-eyed silence. The loss is so terrible and complete that he is flung back into being the old Harlan, who always said that tears were not in his education. Back in the States, there is a huge messy funeral for Billy in New York City, with people turning out by the thousands, and lots of speeches and tears and outrage. Then Billy's body is cremated.

Harlan goes back to Prescott, and scatters the ashes in the woods, at the spot where he and Billy first were intimate. A few weeks later, he is back teaching school, feeling like he has fallen off some edge of non-feeling, and will never be able to climb back.

A few of months later, Betsy quietly tells him that Billy had talked to her about being the surrogate mother. She is prepared to go through with it. Initially Harlan is very upset, and doesn't even want to discuss it. But Betsy persists, and Harlan finally realizes that he should go through with this -- that the child should be Billy's. So Betsy visits a doctor and gets inseminated. Nine months later, a baby boy is born and named John William Heden. Betsy is living just off campus, in her own little home, but Harlan visits, trying to act like a father.

Harlan is still going through life like a sleepwalker, coaching without his heart in it, even though a number of top young runners have joined the team. It isn't till Vince comes to visit the campus one day that he finally gets in touch with his feelings again.

Vince forces a conversation about a sore subject; Harlan's jealousy and his fear that Billy and Vince had had a romantic fling in the past. Vince makes Harlan listen to the whole story of how he and Billy met while running track in high school, and how their gaydar spotted each other -- their gleeful secret at knowing each other, knowing there was somebody else in their sport who was gay, their hopes of doing great things...and someday the sports world might change, might find it in its heart to be a little less cruel. As he listens, Harlan realizes that all his jealousy was for nothing, that Billy had always been honest with him.

Harlan suddenly realizes that he is crying for the first time. His memories wake up, and Billy is there, alive and real to him. Feelings and memories that he blocked after Billy’s death.

In the last chapter, Harlan is out on the track again, about to compete for the first time since he was on the Marine track team. It is the U.S. Masters mile at Madison Square Garden. He looks back on his life -- on all the sad and lonely years of hiding from love, then the year and a half of having the love that he'd dreamed of, and then losing it so swiftly and terribly. But he has decided to go on with his life, because he has a sudden new inkling of how precious it is, and he owes that to Billy. Betsy is there with baby John, and so is everyone else.

The mile run is a huge battle, with other runners bumping him and jostling him hatefully, and the Manhattan crowd screaming their pros and cons. But Harlan is the consummate kicker, and he comes from behind with a charge that can't be stopped.

In that moment, he feels Billy running with him, alive and real, right in the same space and time with his own sweaty efforts, and he barely hangs onto his lead to break the tape. His arms go high in the glaring lights, splendid and victorious.

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