By EDDIE PELLS -- Associated Press
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- At 46, Mike Brown should be too old to throw a javelin for anything more than fun.
He should be too old to sweat through the daily three-hour practices in the suffocating Florida heat, too old to load his truck up to travel to meets where he routinely wipes those smug grins off the faces of competitors half his age.
And he should be way too old to be dreaming about the Olympics.
"But this is what I'm best at," Brown says. "And when you find something you're pretty good at, you darn sure ought to pursue it."
So his mission goes forward, despite a shortage of money, time and professional coaching. He also has to cope with a reconstructed knee that was injured so badly four years ago that friends wondered if he would ever jog again, let alone throw the javelin.
He pushes on despite "mind-boggling" odds against making it to Sydney.
First, he needs to make it to the Olympic trials, where he would become the oldest person to throw a javelin there.
He needs a throw of at least 228 feet in one of two qualifying meets in July. If he reaches that goal -- he has thrown it more than 230 feet on several occasions -- he would need an effort on the scale of Bob Beamon's long jump to make the Olympics, by winning the trials or throwing the Olympic qualifying standard of about 268 feet (82 meters).
But he has beaten long odds before. And for a middle-age high school geography teacher and track coach even to be thinking about the Olympics -- well, to Brown that seems like half a victory right there.
"It's great to be in the arena," says Brown, who stands 6-foot-3, weighs 230 pounds and can bench press 360. "It's about going to a meet and feeling the butterflies, doing all those things you're not supposed to do anymore when you're in your 40s. Everyone at the Olympic trials has a chance to make the Olympics. That's how I look at it."
Things could have been different had he not seen a group of junior college athletes throwing on a field one day.
It was 1976. Brown had graduated from Jacksonville University, where he was a star pitcher until his shoulder gave out. He stopped his truck, walked over to the field and gave the track and field athletes the surprise of their lives.
"I hated him at first," says his friend Randy Reagor, one of the athletes on the field that day. "He walks out there with a stinky T-shirt on and after about five tries, he threw it a lot farther than I ever had. He didn't even know what he was doing."
In the quarter century since, he has become a regular at collegiate meets, where non-students are allowed to compete "unattached." He has been to five U.S. national championships and has competed internationally.
At the Florida Relays last year, he threw 221 feet, 8 inches, breaking the record for the 45-49 age division by an astonishing 11 feet. He won the World Masters Championships in England by 16 feet last August.
"I get a lot of slaps on the back from the guys my age," he says. "I'm doing this for myself, but in a way, I'm doing it for all the guys in my age group. I'm doing it for the guys who were great once and would love to still be in the thick of competition."
But mostly, he does it because he loves it.
It's hard to imagine a hardship or insult he hasn't endured to compete or train.
He has been kicked out of vacant high school fields by security guards who thought he was trying to hunt rabbits with his javelin.
He has driven the entire way from Florida to a meet in Tennessee in second gear because his truck's transmission was shot.
He has pulled up to meets the night before, low on cash, and decided to sleep in the pole-vault pit.
Then, there was the knee injury when he tried to plant his leg into the turf at a meet in Tennessee. His leg buckled back. He tore his anterior cruciate ligament, his medial collateral ligament and his meniscus. So hard was the fall that he separated his shoulder on impact.
"He was devastated," Reagor says. "He laid on the couch for a week. He took all his medals and put them in the attic. He sounded so bad. I got off the phone and I was scared for him because I knew that was his life. Throwing the javelin is what defines him."
So, he didn't quit. Instead, he returned to the sport, amazing the people who followed his career and helped with his recovery.
"For him to come back is unbelievable," said Frank Novakoski, a former trainer for the U.S. Olympic teams who helped with the rehab. "He's back to, or better than he was before."
As a result, he still gets his fair share of weird looks from the college kids when he takes the field and warms up in his trademark flannel shirt. Then, the weird looks turn to wide-eyed admiration.
He'll go for one more surprise next Saturday at a meet in Indianapolis. He'll have another chance July 8 in Gainesville, Fla. If he hits the throw of 228 feet at either event, he'll have a spot in the Olympic trials.
"I want to represent all the people who are dedicated to what they do," Brown says. "I want to push my body and push the envelope. I'm trying to find where the end of the envelope is."
