THE RETURN OF WHITE LIGHTNING

A decade ago, Casey Combest was running down Tyson Gay as one of the fastest high school sprinters in the world. Today, he's running down the dream of a comeback.

by Mark Anders (words and photos), video courtesy of The House, Inc.

The smell of freshly turned earth fills the air as the Kentucky sun bakes Casey Combest's buzzed blond head. He sips a Mountain Dew and waits as the excavator fills his dump truck with another load of dirt. If he's quick, he can fit in one more run before lunch. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Combest's former rival Tyson Gay is preparing for a very different run—the 100-meter Olympic finals. In high school, Combest routinely beat Gay. Now, at age 27, Casey can't keep his mind from wandering to Beijing and how things might've worked out differently.

Run into him on the street and you'd never tag Combest as a former world-class sprinter. At 5' 7", 145 pounds, with a goatee and a grill full of gold, he looks more Eminem than elite athlete. But beneath the baggy track suit is a ripped torso and a pair of taut and stacked legs. His voice is strong and bright, his accent straight-up southern laced with slang straight from the hood.

Which is exactly where he's from. Combest was raised in Henderson, a small Kentucky town on the Ohio River. Downtown Henderson is the kind of place people describe as "cute," but Casey grew up a white kid in the predominantly black projects, living with his mom in a decidedly un-cute two-room house. Life was tough, but Combest found solace on the track. Throughout high school, he logged 75 wins (and meet records) in 77 races, including five state championships. He set three national high school records. His scorching 6.57 in the indoor 60m still stands.

Nicknamed "White Lightning", Combest's explosiveness brought him national attention. 'I have been running track for over 20 years, and he has one of the best starts I have ever seen," sprinting icon Carl Lewis told Sports Illustrated in 1998. "The sky is the limit for [him]." In 1998, Combest helped Team USA win a silver medal in the 4x100 relay at the World Junior Championships. He was offered a scholarship by the University of Kentucky, but his ACT scores were too low—a consequence of his devotion to sprinting and spending his free time getting high and hanging with a sketchy crowd. Instead, he enrolled in Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Ala., winning the 2000 junior college championship in the 60m as a freshman. But soon after, he grew homesick, lost interest in training and dropped out of school. "I was tired of living in a corn field," he says. "I was ready to come home and make some money." At 19, his sprinting career was over.

Combest channeled his drive into a new line of work—selling weed. "We were flashy motherf------," he says. "I had a Cadillac that was bumper-to-bumper 14 karat gold. We were looking like f------ millionaires." To Henderson police, Combest looked like a bull's eye. In July 2001, he was arrested and served 60 days in prison. Later, he found work at a factory in Henderson, eventually supervising a team of six custodians and earning a decent—and legit—paycheck. Along the way, he got married and had two kids. Casey didn't think much about his former life until spring 2007 when he was invited to present medals at a meet in Mobile, Ala. "More than 5,000 people gave me a standing ovation and I got this chill over my body," he says. "On the airplane home, I told my daughter, 'Daddy's going to get back to running.'"

With that, an unlikely comeback was born. Combest enlisted his father and his former high school coach Bob O'Brien to get him back in shape. While his regime wasn't exactly the stuff of elite athletes (he continued to smoke and down half-dozen Mountain Dews daily) he attacked his training. "Casey don't have no quit," says his father. "He'd be staggering, throwing up. But he's always saying the same thing: 'I'm getting better, Daddy. I'm getting better, ain't I?'"

Soon, local newspapers caught onto Casey's Rocky Balboa-like quest. A film crew began shadowing him and the drama came quickly. In December 2007, his first race back, Combest pulled a quad, forcing six weeks of rehab. He returned to the track the following month at a small-time meet in Maysville, Ken. There, he blazed a 6.27 in the 55m—his third-fastest time ever. After a seven-year layoff, the old Casey seemed to be back.There were flashes of greatness over the following weeks, but Casey's body couldn't hold up. He pulled more muscles, missing meets and losing races. After a loss in February at the Armory Invitational in New York City, Combest met Trevor Graham, one of track and field's most illustrious—and infamous—coaches, then in the midst of a legal battle for allegedly providing steroids to Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin. The Jamaican-born Graham had been searching for a white athlete to mold into a world-class sprinter. "I've always wanted to break the stereotype that a white man can't sprint as fast as a black man," says Graham. "I wanted to show the world that that's just a bunch of crap." The white guy from Henderson was the perfect candidate and Graham offered to coach him for free.

Combest was wary, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. "If Pete Rose wanted to give you batting instruction would you turn him down?" he says. "Everybody else was running from Trevor. I just wanted to learn from him." So, he moved his wife and kids into a motel in Raleigh, N.C., and began training with Graham. He lifted weights for the first time. He quit smoking and ate better. Within two months, his speed was coming back and qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the 100m—and a showdown with Gay—seemed possble.

Combest planned to qualify at a meet in May at the University of Louisville. To make the cut, he'd need to run a 10.07 or better—.07 seconds faster than his personal best. He was clean out of the blocks and by the 40-yard mark, he had the lead. But the cheers of more than 30 of Combest's friends and family turned to a collective gasp as he faltered and pulled his left hamstring, hobbling in at 11.77. The following week, Graham was convicted of lying to federal investigators, earning a lifetime ban from the sport.

Just like that, Casey Combest's Olympic dream was dead.

The dream of a comeback, however, lives on. After his summer behind the wheel of a dump truck, Combest plans to compete in the U.S. indoor season, which begins in December, and shoot for a title in the 60. He'll start training again in September, but without Graham or a sponsor, Casey's long shot has become even longer. As for his old rival Gay in Beijing, Combest will be paying attention. But it won't be easy. "I'm proud of Tyson. I'm not jealous of him," he says. "It's just hard when you once was the same caliber and now you're on the couch watching."


*myspace.com/kasperfromthek