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Brian Paul
Fell is a world-class sprinter. He ran track at UCLA and was
a two-time national champion: in the 4x400-meter relay and
the distance medley, in which he ran the 400-meter leg. He
has qualified for and competed in three Olympic trials, most
recently the trials for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. As a
member of
HSI track and field, he has trained with the likes of
Maurice Green.
I have
known Fell since the summer of 2002; for most of that time,
I have been trying to get his permission to write this
article. I have trained with him and I have won two gold
medals at the Gay Games with him. He and I were even
roommates for a year. That entire time, Fell was wary of any
press that might draw attention to his sexuality.
Being a gay
White sprinter, it's understandable.
"In track
and field, in sprinting, there were no, and there are no,
out gay athletes," Fell says. And in his specialty, the
400-meters, White runners simply haven't find success; that
is until Jeremy Warner exploded onto the seen and won the
event at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, something Fell had
been hoping he would do.
Training
and hoping to compete in the Olympics, Fell has shied away
from interviews like this for years. Not so anymore. Soon to
be hanging up his sprinting spikes for distance shoes, Fell
is increasingly willing to talk about his past, and his
future, as a gay athlete.
This isn't
to say Fell hadn't been completely in the closet. As a
freshman and sophomore at UCLA, he dated a male teammate,
Brandon Del Campo. Both were deeply closeted at the
time, sharing their relationship with only their closest
friends. The two lived together Fell's sophomore year; but
their break-up that year caused complications in more than
just their living situation.
"I was the
one on the team to go to for workouts or anything," Fell
says. "And then, when we broke up, my life turned around. I
moved out, and people started questioning my mental state.
They didn't understand what was going on with me. Mr. Strong
Brian Fell was now Mr. Crazy, Confused and Depressed, and
people thought it was just a typical roommate switcheroo.
And I had to explain to them that [Brandon] was my partner."
Most
difficult was telling coach John Smith, considered one of
the premiere track coaches in the world, the U.S. Olympic
Committee's national track and field coach of the year in
1999 and the head coach of the 2005 USA National Team.
"I was
crying and he just gave me this big hug and he wouldn't let
me go," Fell remembers. "And he said, 'it's alright, nothing
changes, you're still my favorite.' He said has many gay
friends, and he said being gay is nothing different, and all
he wanted from me was to refocus and regain myself. And I
did."
In all of
his 10 years as a sprinter at UCLA, as a student at the
school and then continuing his training on campus after
graduation, Fell says he experienced only one moment of
homophobia, from then-UCLA-basketball-player
Rico Hines, who called him a faggot in the training room
several years ago.
Within the
team, Fell was well-supported. Straight male teammates would
lovingly tease him, asking him if he thought they were hot.
And when Fell's senior season came around, his team voted
him captain. For an out White sprinter in a world dominated
by straight Black men, that was quite a statement.
When he
raced at the Gay Games in Sydney in 2002, Fell was golden.
He won five events: the 100-meters, 200-meters, 400-meters,
4x100-meter relay and the 4x400-meter relay.
"What I did
in Sydney, I would love to challenge someone else to do,"
Fell says. "I would most likely get injured. To go from the
100 to the 400, it's not a safe bet for any sprinter. I
almost got injured in Sydney, and I bet I'd get injured in
Chicago if I tried it again. It was so not safe to do that.
Only one
man – Tom Burke – has ever won the 100-meter and 400-meter
races at the Olympics; and that was in 1896, the first-ever
modern Olympic Games, and with a time of 54.2 seconds,
almost eight seconds slower than Fell's top time. And it was
only this past weekend that a man won the two events at the
NCAA championships, as LSU's Xavier Carter took the national
championships in those races, along with the 4x400 and the
4x100. That put Carter 200 meters short of what Fell did in
Sydney.
In Chicago
this July, Fell is considering attempting the feat again. He
is presently registered for the 100, 400, 4x400 and 4x100,
and he may add the 200 to his docket. Winning all four in
back-to-back Gay Games would be an incredible
accomplishment; but attempting all four could also leave him
with a costly injury.
Despite
being a track star at the Gay Games in Sydney, Fell shied
away from any attention. He was wary of his picture being
taken and he wasn't thrilled to have his name printed on
Outsports.com. But by the end of the Games, Fell's hard
outer shell started to melt.
"All those
years, I practiced day in and day out how to be 'normal' in
an athletic setting," Fell says. "I didn't have to do that
in Sydney, and I loosened up a little bit more as each day
went on, seeing men hug each other and two lips touching
each other. Every day I saw human compassion."
While he
would love to have Olympic gold around his neck, at 29, he
sees his hopes of making the Olympics in the 400-meters
extinguished. Fell blames part of that on his competitors'
use of performance-enhancing drugs, something he has always
refused to take part in. He says the people who take those
drugs form a very secret club, that they're very smart, and
that they know how to not get caught.
"But you
can tell by looking at a human body who takes steroids,"
Fell says. "You can literally see a woman's or a man's body
change. I have raced people who were once not as good as me,
and then a year later, I could not beat them. I knew my
training and diet and vitamin intake were world-class. And
not to beat a peer who was once inferior to me and couldn't
pass me in a race and now is beating me, there's only one
solution for that: they're taking performance-enhancing
drugs. At that level, every millisecond counts. And if your
competitor is somehow suddenly beating you now, there's just
no way around it."
Having
lived in Los Angeles for his collegiate and post-college
careers, Fell has traded in his days of sometimes being
recognized on the street for a more anonymous new life in
Fort Lauderdale. He has taken up interior redesigns of
showrooms and stores and event planning and designing. He
has already begun a transition to distance running and
triathlons (he placed in the top 25 in the Los Angeles
triathlon last year), and he says he's going to tackle a
marathon after the Gay Games in July.
"And I'm
currently single," he says. "You can put that in big
letters."
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