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David Neville

Courtesy of Indiana University Athletics.

David Neville

2008

He Kept the Faith and Dived to Glory

DAVID NEVILLE FOUND HIS RHYTHM BEFORE FINDING HIS STRIDE.

He was once better at music than he was at track and field, playing percussion instruments from fourth grade. His mother has a master’s degree in piano performance. He played in the marching band at Indiana University and graduated in 2007 with a music education degree.

But he was a runner. As was his father. As was his grandfather.

Neville himself didn’t necessarily see it that way. He quit track after breaking his foot as a high school sophomore in Merrillville, Indiana. He discovered that he missed it and returned to the team the next year, just a few weeks before the sectional. He qualified for the state meet and finished seventh in the 100 meters.

Then, six years before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he imagined himself being there. He was wearing a Team USA singlet. He was winning medals. The vision was so vivid that he told a reporter about it.

“I stuck with it, stuck with it. And I kept my faith,” said Neville, a devout Christian. “And my faith is the only reason why I can say with assurance that I would be in Beijing.”

He was not only there. He won a bronze medal in the 400 meters, diving to the finish line to complete a 1–2-3 American sweep, and a gold in the 4×400 relay.

Neville’s epiphany came as he began specializing in the 400, a long sprint that has been characterized as the most painful race in the sport. His father, David Neville II, was convinced it would be the best race for his six-foot-three son. The father ran 800 meters in 1:48.54 for Virginia Military Institute in 1982, setting a school record that lasted twenty-six years.

The son was not as convinced, especially after his first 400. He ran that distance in a relay after a few days of training.

“It was horrible,” Neville recalled.

It was fate.

As a Merrillville senior, he set what was then an Indiana high school record of 46.99 seconds in winning the 400-meter state championship. He was fourth in the 200 in what was surely the best Indiana field ever assembled. Gary West Side’s Mark Jelks set a state record of 20.88, and South Bend La Salle’s Leroy Dixon was second. Jelks later became a national indoor champion at 60 meters and first native Hoosier to run 100 meters in less than ten seconds (9.99). Dixon won a gold medal in the 4×100 relay at the 2007 World Championships.

Neville’s gold medal was years in the making. On enrolling at Indiana, he was ineligible for college competition in his first year. He had adequate grades and test scores, but the NCAA did not count an eleventh-grade English course as part of core curriculum. So he trained alone after the Hoosiers’ practices ended, doing workouts timed by a friend. He took classes in hapkido, a Korean martial art.

So his father continued to coach him and travel with his son to meets. At the 2003 Pan American Junior Championships in Bridgetown, Barbados, Neville won a silver medal in the 200 in 20.63. The gold medalist was a sixteen-year-old Jamaican who also made it to Beijing: Usain Bolt.

By 2004, Neville appeared to be accelerating the timetable toward an Olympics. He won the 200 and 400 at the Big Ten meet—the times of 20.39 and 45.05 were both the fastest ever by a graduate of an Indiana high school—and was seventh in the 400 at the NCAA Championships. His 45.05 was among the top ten times in the world, and six would be chosen for the 4×400 relay pool from the Olympic Trials. Yet it was perhaps a case of too much too soon, because Neville was eliminated in his first-round heat at the trials. He would not be going to Athens.

By 2006, he was back on track. He had his best NCAA finish in the 400 meters, third, and ran the USA Championships at what amounted to a home stadium in Indianapolis. He was assigned the unfavorable lane 8 in the final, much like being adrift on an island. Nothing but open space ahead of you, nothing to signal who might be behind you. Nonetheless, he again finished third, lowering his time to 44.75. It was a race of inestimable value. Not only was it his last as a collegian— setting himself up for a pro contract with Nike—but it supplied experience in that outside lane.

He completed his degree in 2007 but had an undistinguished season, culminating with seventh place at the USA Championships. Afterward, he and his wife, Arial, moved to Valencia, California, so he could be coached by John Smith. Smith, who once set a 440-yard world record, had previously coached Olympic gold medalists such as Maurice Greene, Quincy Watts, Kevin Young, and Steve Lewis.

“I saw a level in him, a spirit it him, that only lives in certain people who are really and truly champions,” Smith said.

Neville’s 2008 season began auspiciously when he won the national indoor championship at Boston in the 400 meters, his first major title. Yet that race did not include Jeremy Wariner, the defending gold medalist, or LaShawn Merritt, the favorites to take two of the three US team spots. Neville was one of many given a chance for third in the Olympic Trials at Eugene, Oregon.

Again, Neville drew lane 8 for the final. He ran scared. He ran into the lead through 300 meters, conceding he was “kind of shocked.” He was passed by Merritt and Wariner but comfortably claimed the third Olympic berth, clocking a personal best of 44.61, or four-tenths of a second ahead of fourth place. He did not take the traditional Hayward Field victory lap, explaining, “I didn’t feel too good afterward.”

Lead-up to the Olympic Games wasn’t too good, either. He raced poorly in Europe, then developed a sore Achilles tendon while training in China. He underwent near-constant medical treatment in Beijing.

In Olympic semifinals, two per heat qualified for the final, plus the next two fastest times. Neville was second in his semifinal in 44.91. Just as in Eugene, two medals seemed secure in the hands of Wariner and Merritt, followed by a mad dash for bronze.

Coincidentally, Neville drew lane 9, again putting him on the outside, unable to see those he was racing. At least, he was unable to see them until it mattered. As he approached the finish, out of the corner of his eye, he saw others nearby. He made a hasty decision. He dove. He slid across the wet track as a baseball player would sliding head first into second base.

“I did it because it was the only thing I could think to do in the last second,” Neville said. “God might have pushed me over.”

Merritt won gold in 43.75 over Wariner’s 44.74, representing the biggest margin at an Olympics since 1896. Neville was a close third in 44.80, and .04 ahead of fourth. It was the Americans’ fifth sweep of 400-meter medals, following 1904, 1968, 1988, and 2004. Neville became the Hoosiers’ first medalist in an individual track and field since hurdler Willie May won a silver in 1960.

Neville’s was the slowest medal-winning time since 1980. That was irrelevant. So were the bruised chest and scrapes from his dive onto the track.

“Sometimes we have to sacrifice our body and our mind and our spirit for what we really want,” he said.

This time he did take a victory lap, albeit a slow one. He repeatedly stopped and crouched, wrapped in an American flag, while making his way around the Bird’s Nest. He hugged his wife and parents, who came to the rail to share in the celebration.

The reluctant quarter-miler had thus run the three fastest 400s of his life in the most unconventional way—all out of the outside lane.

“I didn’t look behind, I didn’t look back, and I just kept my eye focused on the prize that was ahead,” Neville said. “That’s why I have medal around my neck right now.”

Although acknowledging he felt “pretty beat up,” he was chosen to run a semifinal of the 4×400 relay for Team USA. He ended his leadoff leg in first place with a time of 44.92, and the Americans won to qualify for the final a day later. Team USA coach Bubba Thornton said Neville deserved to run the final after diving for bronze in the 400 meters. It had not been a particularly successful Olympics for Team USA, so Thornton exhorted the relay team to “kick butt.” Which is what they did.

Merritt (44.35), Angelo Taylor (43.70), Neville (44.16), and Wariner (43.18) combined for a time of 3:55.39, breaking the Olympic record and beating silver medalist Bahamas by almost three seconds. The previous Olympic record was 2:55.74 by the United States in 1992.

“I was just soaking it in, and I was saying, ‘Do what you’ve got to do. Bring it home,’” Neville said. “To have a gold is great, but it’s even sweeter to have an Olympic record.”

He became the fourth gold medalist out of IU in the 4×400 relay. Others were Ivan Fuqua in 1932, Roy Cochran in 1948, and Sunder Nix in 1984.

Neville, at twenty-four, was young enough to have tried for one and perhaps two more Olympics. He never again ran as fast as he did in 2008, and only in 2009 did he reach another national final (he finished fifth). Because of recurring Achilles injuries, he retired soon after finishing last in a first-round heat at the 2012 Olympic Trials. Track was never his primary mission anyway.

He was once a minster at the Merrillville Unity AME Zion Church, which had been founded by his father. In California, he led youth ministry at Santa Clarita Christian Fellowship Church. In May 2014, he returned to his home state as head track and field coach for Taylor University, a small Christian college in Upland, Indiana. He left Taylor in 2017 to become an assistant coach at Tennessee.

Neville returned to a big stage in 2016 as one of sixteen cast members on Fox’s nationally televised reality show American Grit, supplying a glimpse of life in the military. Filming took place in the wilderness of Pack Forest outside Eatonville, Washington. One of his team’s early challenges was carrying a 125-pound log for 3.6 miles through forest and up hills. Taylor track athletes held a weekly watch party to see how their coach fared.

Neville’s team did not win. But his college athletes could see for themselves that their coach had grit.