Former World-Class Sprinter Steps Back From The Brink

SUCCESS CAME FAST and carried a high price, says Tacoma native Darrell Robinson, once a world-class 400-meter runner. Nearly two weeks ago, it all caught up with him when he tried to commit suicide.

Darrell Robinson thought we forgot him.

So, he drank three-quarters of a bottle of antifreeze to forget himself.

Now all he can do is remember pieces of what happened, of how a former world-class runner from Tacoma could teeter on the edge of an abyss with no hope.

And no future.

Lying in a hospital bed 11 days after a suicide attempt, Robinson, 32, looked hollow and old as if his once-lithe body had betrayed him.

With a shaky arm he tried to put a soup bowl on a tray but needed help. The tattoo on his right biceps was as tired-looking as his dark chocolate eyes. His hair was matted and twisted into pig tails. He wore two earrings in his right lobe.

Robinson was alive because someone called authorities about a suspicious vehicle parked at a Mercer Island lot far too long, his brother Michael said. After investigating, police found Robinson slumped inside.

Was he happy they did?

"That's a question I've asked myself 100 times today," said Robinson, speaking publicly for the first time since awaking from a weeklong coma.

One of the world's fastest 400-meter runners 10 years ago, Robinson was supposed to see a therapist the day he tried to take his life, Michael said yesterday.

Robinson took a friend to the airport and said he needed her car to drive to his appointment. He had other intentions.

"I was just going to do it," he said. "I just didn't want to be here anymore. I just wanted to do something quick, simple, painless and if I got caught they couldn't save me."

Although Robinson seems to think otherwise, it is ultimately up to him to save himself once he recovers physically at his parents' Tacoma home. Joyce Robinson and her daughters Elaine and Lisa took Darrell there from Harborview Medical Center yesterday.

Medical experts said antifreeze kills brain sells and affects the liver and central nervous system. Michael, 36, the oldest of six Robinson children, said Darrell suffered from massive brain swelling. He said doctors could not yet assess permanent damage.

He has double vision and is so weak, it is a struggle to walk five steps to the bathroom. He has limited short-term memory, and had trouble recalling his parents' telephone number. At times, he fell silent, became glassy-eyed, and his lips trembled. He looked scared.

"They didn't think he would come out of the coma," his brother said. "With the amount of antifreeze he drank, if he hadn't been so healthy, he would have been dead."

As he gets stronger each day, Robinson knows he has to face the issues that led him there.

Yet he is evasive about the whys.

"Not one of my friends knew I was this upset," he said."

"My brother was still caught up in his old glory days," said Michael, a Tacoma medical records technology student. "He needs a reality check."

The brutal truth sometimes is tough to accept. Robinson said he is not yet sure.

"I'm around now and I can see whether this part of my life is worth it or not," he said.

After much success in sport, Robinson could not handle the frustrations of real-world conditions, particularly finding steady employment. A recent breakup with a girlfriend also adversely affected him.

"It was about difficult," he said. "It was beyond difficult. It was just a task. I was a track guy to a lot of people. People didn't care to know if I had a brain. My career should have afforded me something. I thought I'd be something, but not even."

Michael said he had not talked to his brother in about four years and had no idea he was living in Washington, much less downtown Seattle.

Robinson still was training, but his best years were long behind him. He also helped former Husky football players Damon Huard and Joe Kralik improve their 40-yard times. Both visited him at the hospital.

But not much else was happening for a man who attended the University of Houston, Washington and UCLA and was once a track and field personality.

Robinson said he tried unsuccessfully to get a job as a track commentator.

As the personal setbacks mounted, he depleted his savings earned as an international competitor. He was ranked third in the world in 1986, his best effort. As a Wilson High School senior in 1982, he set a world junior record of 44.69 seconds and was expected to win the 400 meters in the 1984 Olympics.

Success, he said, came too fast, as fast as his trademark sprint finishes.

If there are lessons from his mistakes, it is this, Robinson said:

"No one thought I would do it. They thought I had everything. I am a lot of parents' kids. They need to take a look and see how their children are living.

"There is nothing wrong with the accolades, but what are they balanced with? What's the downside? For me, the downside was a lot.

"You have to be more than an athlete. You have to have a social structure - family included - to be more than a number."

Joyce Robinson said she did not want to discuss her son's situation.

Robinson was perhaps best known internationally for claiming Carl Lewis and Florence Griffith Joyner used illegal performance enhancing agents in a 1989 article in the German magazine Stern.

They denied the allegations and Griffith Joyner called Robinson a compulsive liar. "She had to say that," Robinson said, "but anybody who knows wouldn't believe her."

The allegations were never proven, and Robinson seemed to drift away after the controversy.

"I had the feeling that everyone forgot about me," he said. "That's the sport. You always forget."

As a steady flow of calls around the world come in, it was clear Robinson has not been forgotten. Somewhere deep inside, he knew it.

"I want to get a job and get my health together," he said. "That's all I can ask for."

Moments later, the doubts returned, illustrating how difficult the struggle will be.

"I don't know if you'll be doing a story on me next year because I'm eating garbage," he said. "I want to go forward but it's not up to me. I've got to get an opportunity to show that I am worth something."

When he left the hospital with his family yesterday, he went with hope.

He has a 9-month-old daughter, Jihan, who lives with her mother on Mercer Island. Jihan's mother is not the woman who recently left him.

He has parents, brothers and sisters to get reacquainted with.

And he has friends from track and field who want to see him again.

Before his early morning departure yesterday from the hospital, Robinson collected his flowers, a picture of his daughter and other gifts that family and friends brought him.

But he left five balloons for the man who shared his hospital room.

"He told me to enjoy them," the roommate said. "Then he took off."