In The Fast Lane Again

The first time Floyd and two of his cousins ventured from their closed social circle, to play Little League baseball, they were met head on by racism. "We were told straight out that we weren't wanted," says Floyd . "We were the only ones told. We also happened to be the league's only blacks." Floyd , who maintains his first love in athletics was baseball, has not played the game since.

Still, Floyd 's whole life revolved around sports. He was a running back and defensive back in junior high and a flanker at Dougherty High, where "they didn't have anybody to throw me the ball." He won several local powerlifting and weightlifting titles in the 148-pound class. He drag-raced, too, on the streets of Albany , first in an old Chevy Malibu and later in a Vega. "This wasn't a normal Vega," he says. "The engine had been worked on and everything." Floyd also bowled in the 180s, came to dunk a basketball with ease and developed into a good swimmer.

Kelvin Terry says that "the Floyd name was known in running before Stanley came along," referring to the 880 and mile performances of Louis, Walter and Karl. Louis, for example, once ran a 4:06 mile while a student at Albany (Ga.) State and now is an excellent road racer. Stanley, however, struggled with even middle distances. "It was pure agony," he says. One day during his sophomore year in high school, Stanley's miling career suddenly—and mercifully—ended. He raced and defeated the school's sprint coach in a 100-yard fun run and was timed in 9.9.

The following year, on a dirt track, Floyd ran a 9.3 100 from a standing start. "I didn't use blocks until my senior year because I figured I was running fast enough without them," he says. By the end of his high school career in 1979, Floyd had won 54 straight sprints and state 100-and 220-yard-dash titles. None of Floyd 's high school success, however, prepared anyone for what he would do in 1980 as an Auburn freshman.

"We'd expected Stanley to be a good sprinter," says Auburn Coach Mel Rosen. "He wasn't good. He was great." Floyd became the most valuable member of the Auburn team, consistently scoring points in the 100-meter dash, the 200, the 400, and the 400 and mile relays. He set his world junior record in the 100 and won every individual 100 he ran, including the SEC and NCAA championships.

In the summer after his first collegiate season, Floyd had 100-meter victories in The Athletics Congress outdoor championships, the Olympic Trials and 13 of 15 meets in Europe and China . Twice he defeated 1980 Olympic 100-meter gold medalist Allan Wells of Great Britain . Floyd , who had been virtually unknown outside of Georgia just a year before, had become a celebrity: He was the world's fastest human.

That stunning development was succeeded by another shocker. In early September, a week after returning from China and two days after classes had begun at Auburn, Floyd went to the registrar's office and dropped all his courses. "The walls fell in," he says. "I was accused of taking money in Europe and getting a big head and being ungrateful. I was marked 'Brand X.' No good. Coach Rosen had created a monster, and that monster had rose up and ate Auburn."

Floyd just didn't like Auburn. He felt he'd been pressured into going there by family and friends back in Putney, which is 160 miles south of the school, where Tiger alumni are plentiful and persuasive. "The boosters held these meetings all the time to talk about what a nice college it was," says Floyd . His relatives found the meetings convincing. Though he could not decide between Auburn and South Carolina , everyone he knew preferred Auburn. "People were like, 'Hurry, stick the pen in your hand and sign,' " Floyd says. On May 1, 1979, the day he was scheduled to endorse a letter of intent to Auburn, Floyd was still having second thoughts. He called a friend, telling him he was reconsidering. Even when Auburn Assistant Coach Mike Muka arrived, Floyd was hesitant. A photograph in the next morning's Albany Herald showed Floyd at the signing, smiling thinly, pen in hand, with his uncle Joe James watching over one shoulder, grandmother Mary Floyd looking over the other and Rosa Floyd observing from one side.

Auburn is an isolated, overwhelmingly white—by a 30-to-l ratio—school, and Floyd, who retained a vivid memory of that day at Little League tryouts, did not feel comfortable there. He became depressed by what he considered the lack of social life. Floyd is normally an entertaining young man who speaks rapidly and with great animation and emphasis. At Auburn, however, he kept to himself. "It was dead" he says. "There weren't parties. Nothing. The closest place to go was Tuskegee, maybe 20 miles away, and my car was broken." The Vega had finally blown its motor from the strain of drag racing.

"Stanley kept talking about going into the Army," says Rosen, now in his 19th year as the Tigers' coach. "He's from a very poor family and he needed money to fix his car. He wanted some pocket money, too. He seemed very concerned with making money."