In The Fast Lane Again

"I figured you had a lot of boyfriends" said Floyd.

Walton, the fourth-ranked woman 800-meter runner in the U.S. last year, is generally quiet but can be feisty. "How could I have boyfriends?" she asked. "You would always come up when a guy was around me and start saying, 'Delisa, I love you. I want to be your man.' " The two finally began dating while competing in Europe last summer, and Floyd proposed in October. "But he didn't get down on his knees...as he should have," said Walton.

"You were standing up," said Floyd.

"You should have told me to sit down."

Walton, a junior from Detroit, majors in speech pathology; she chose that field because she has a 10-year-old cousin who stutters. Around her, Floyd shows his sensitive side. Perhaps his strongest memory from high school, he says, is of a Special Olympics meet he attended. "The kids were having trouble running straight, and people in the stands were laughing at them. I wanted to yell at those people. I wanted to cry." He was similarly affected at a meet in Dallas in January, when he had to scratch from the final of the 60 because of a sore back. A young boy and his father came up to Floyd afterward. The boy was in tears. "He came here just to see you run," said the father. Floyd apologized. He also promised that at next year's meet he would bring the child down to the starting line with him.

"Stanley's been through a lot, but he's a very good man," says Duncan. He and Tellez have changed Floyd's start this year, shifting his weight back onto the rear block and changing the angles between his legs and his torso. "His forward lean used to be so much that he had to get a foot down quickly at the gun just to avoid falling on his face," says Tellez.

Floyd feels he fell on his face last year by dropping to No. 5 in the world rankings. "I heard it a lot: 'Floyd was a flash, but now he's gone,' " he says. "I intend to run my fastest 100 ever this year. I say, 'Who's gone?' "

Floyd smiles. "By the way, you haven't asked the big question about me and Delisa. After we're married, which one of us is going to move? Hmmm."

He laughs and strokes his chin. "Would it shock you if I moved again?" Floyd asks. "It would shock a lot of people. Oh, yes. But not me. A man has got to live his own life, you know, and he ought to be happy." Which is why the aspiring world's fastest human, once again, is not uncomfortable being a man on the move.