Note: The following appears in the Virginia football gameday program.
Call up YouTube on your favorite device, type in “1996 Olympics women’s 4x400m relay” and bear witness to what, for most, would seem to be the defining moment of Kim Graham’s (now Kim Graham-Miller) distinguished track & field career.
For most, that is, if not necessarily for her.
A couple of videos are available of that race in Atlanta, Ga. One, lasting a bit longer than the length of the U.S. women’s time of 3:20.91, focuses on the anchor lap, the United States’ Jearl Miles barely outlasting a Nigerian runner to the finish line. An unidentified announcer heaps praise on Miles’ effort, adding, “At last, the gold medal is ours.”
View a 10+ minute record of the race, though, and Graham emerges as the United States’ true hero. Running the third leg, the former Clemson star takes the baton 10-to-15m behind Nigeria, which led most of the race. As she rounds the final turn, Graham has cut into that lead, and then she explodes past the Nigerian down the final 100m stretch, handing the baton, and a 6-to-7m lead, to Miles.
A slow-motion replay specifically of Graham’s 49.4-second leg shows that as the announcer, who previously had identified Graham by name once, puts things in perspective.
“That…won the gold medal. It was Kim Graham’s leg that did it. I guess the Americans must put their victory down to Kim Graham’s performance.”
Graham, said from her office at UC San Diego, where she coaches both men’s and women’s track teams, that “the only thing I really remember was how loud the crowd was. We were on home soil and had the whole stadium pulling for us. It’s something I’ll never forget.”
That performance will no doubt be a big part of Graham’s presentation at today’s football game against Virginia, when she and Tiger football star (and current Assistant Coach) C.J. Spiller are inducted into the Clemson’s ultra-prestigious Ring of Honor.
It is “the highest honor bestowed by the Clemson athletic department,” according to a release from the school.
Graham was inducted into the Clemson Hall of Fame in 1998, but this is recognition on an entirely different level.
“‘Cheech’ (Wayne Coffman, her head coach at Clemson who retired in 1997) called to let me know I had been selected,” said Graham, who held coaching positions at Virginia, Duke, UC Davis, Illinois and Sacramento State before taking over at UC San Diego.
She became one of only six women and just three track & field athletes to earn the honor.
“To be honest, I thought I’d already won every award there was at Clemson. But it’s exciting to still get awards after 30 years. It’s really cool.”
In fact, Graham owns too many tributes to list. She was named to the ACC’s top-50 female athletes list and was part of the conference’s 50-year anniversary track & field team, named in 2002. She also was a 15-time ACC champion (including relays), most in Clemson history, as well as a three-time ACC outdoor MVP, the only female to do so, and ACC indoor MVP once.
Nationally, she was runner-up in the 200m at the 1992 NCAA Outdoor Championships and finished fourth twice (1991,93). And of course, there was her relay gold at the Olympic Games, plus as a professional being the USA champion in the 400m in 1998.
“She was a great one,” said Coffman. “The big key to the Ring of Honor selection is you have to be a Clemson graduate. To do what she did, all those championships, you knew every time she stepped on the track, you were thinking, ‘I’m glad she’s getting out of my team van’.”
Graham ran for the Durham Striders, a team organized by her father when she was six, and said she fumed for being made to wait that late. Her older sisters, Kathy and Sonja, also ran for their father’s teams. They went on to be college athletes, one in track & field and one in volleyball. Her brother, Jay, played four years of football at Tennessee, where his position coach was current Clemson football administrator Woody McCorvey. Graham went on to play five years in the NFL.
Coffman, a 1981 Clemson graduate, said Virginia was a prep track & field hotbed then, and in his quest (starting in 1985) to build a powerhouse, he relied on Assistant Coach Ron Garner (a future Clemson head coach) for his recruiting talents in his home state.
“He knew everyone up there,” stated Coffman.
Graham was not the only Virginian to join the Tigers, just the most important.
Coffman and Garner’s efforts struck gold in 1992, when Clemson won its first women’s ACC outdoor title, ending a five-year championship streak by North Carolina. Fittingly, it came down to the meet’s final race, the 4x400m, with Graham on the anchor leg. Three decades later, she said that race rivaled the Olympics medal for excitement and satisfaction.
“It was win or lose and lose the title,” she said of competing on North Carolina’s home track. “It was a very scary moment, but it worked out in the end.”
In the decisive leg, Graham was pitted against another Virginia native and longtime rival, Tar Heel senior Kendra Mackey. In the ACC meet’s earlier races, Mackey had beaten Graham in the 100m, while Clemson’s sophomore took the 200m (“I beat her with a lean”) and also anchored the Tigers’ winning 4x100m relay squad.
“Mackey had made the USA team while in college,” said Graham. “I was very nervous, but I was going to give it my best.”
That was more than good enough. Trailing when she received the baton (as at the Olympics), Graham “sat on Mackey’s rear flank until the last 100m, then I went for it.”
The result?
“I beat her by maybe 10 or 15 meters.”
Coffman recalled that moment vividly. And he remembered Garner’s sideline comment when Graham took the handoff.
“He looked at me and said, ‘It’s over. We’re going to win this championship’.”
So which was most impressive? Her performance in the 1996 Olympics or lifting Clemson to that first ACC title? In Coffman’s mind, both tie for second behind an achievement of a totally different stripe.
Coffman said Graham always led in more than on-track performances.
“She came in and wanted to prove to people she was a good student as well as an athlete. When your attitude is to outwork everyone, it’s contagious. She was a great teammate, because if other athletes didn’t want to work, they got exposed.”
Graham graduated on time with her class in 1994.
Since, her record as a coach, and a mother, has followed the path of her athletics career…exemplary. A mother of two girls, her free time is spent transporting Skye (17) and Leah (15), a flag-football player and a budding track & field star, respectively, to events (both also play volleyball).
“I get really nervous,” admitted Graham watching her daughters.
Leah is a sprinter, competing in the 100m, 200m and 400m races.
“She’s good,” said Graham. “As good as her mother was? She will be.
“I try to look back at my old stuff, what I ran when I was her age. Next year, she’ll be in 10th grade, which is as far back as my (news) articles go. It’ll be cool to compare those, but I try not to do that and let her be her own athlete.”
Then Graham, still the competitor, made a confession.
“She might be thinking about chasing her mother’s records, but she doesn’t know mine.”
Graham laughed once more.
“I’m going to let her know, though, to see how close she is. But I’ll encourage her to be the best she can be.”
Doing so is, after all, a family tradition.
