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UK grad gets Olympic shot from mother's home

LEXINGTON TO BEIJING -- VIA PUERTO RICO

By Mark Story

HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST
David Freeman is a personal trainer at the YMCA on East High Street in Lexington. He plans to compete in the Summer Olympics at Beijing in the 800-meter and 1500-meter events for Puerto Rico. Photo by Charles Bertram | Staff
Charles Bertram
David Freeman is a personal trainer at the YMCA on East High Street in Lexington. He plans to compete in the Summer Olympics at Beijing in the 800-meter and 1500-meter events for Puerto Rico. Photo by Charles Bertram | Staff
Freeman worked with Kris Landers at the YMCA's East High Street facility on June 12. Photo by Charles Bertram | Staff Freeman ran on UK's Shively outdoor track on June 12. He was a wishbone halfback in football in high school. Photo by Charles Bertram | Staff David Freeman celebrated his win in the men's mile, finishing in 3 minutes, 58 seconds, at the Rod McCravy Memorial Track & Field Meet at Nutter Field House in Lexington on February 2. Photo by Matt Goins

You can take $40, head to the High Street branch of the Lexington YMCA and buy a session with a personal trainer.

Which will not seem extraordinary in the least -- until we expand the sentence.

You can take $40, head to the High Street branch of the Lexington YMCA, and buy a session with a personal trainer who is scheduled to compete in the Beijing Olympics for Puerto Rico.

At the Y, introducing David Freeman to unsuspecting visitors has become an intangible employee benefit.

"It's so much fun," says Debbi Dean, Wellness Coordinator at the YMCA. "I say, 'This is David Freeman and he's going to the Olympics.' You can just see people doing double takes."

Then the questions begin.

The Olympics? In Beijing? Yet he's working here in Lexington at the Y?

Coming to Lexington

To understand how Puerto Rico's premier middle distance runner came to be at the Lexington YMCA, we will start at Hialeah High School in South Florida.

As the 1990s turned toward 2000, Hialeah track coach Alex Terry had a late-developing 800-meter runner that he thought had big-time college potential.

Problem was, David Freeman was attracting no recruiting attention.

Terry took action. He got out a book of major colleges and blindly opened it to a page. He then had Freeman point a finger right on the page.

The page that Terry opened to was the schools that began with the letter "K." Freeman's finger landed on both the University of Kansas and the University of Kentucky.

Terry contacted both UK and KU about his unusually small (5-foot-5, 125-pound) runner. Kansas returned a tepid reply.

Kentucky track coach Don Weber saw that Freeman had run impressive times, but fretted that he was too small to be a big-time college distance runner. In most cases, American distance runners tend to be 6-footers with long legs.

Still, what the heck, Weber was taking his team to a spring-break meet in the Miami area. He promised that he would look in on Freeman in competition at the same time.

The UK coach got to Freeman's race just as it was about to start.

"I was standing on the backside," Weber says. "David came around, and his (running) motion was so effortless, so efficient, I thought, 'we are interested in him.' He runs another 100 meters, and I thought, 'we're going to offer this kid some kind of scholarship.'"

On his recruiting trip to Lexington, a lifelong southern Floridian flew in over Keeneland and Calumet Farm.

"I see nothing but land and horses," says Freeman. "I lived on the beach. I was used to sand and water. Now, all I see is land. I got off the plane, and I'm like, 'I don't think this is the place for me.'"

Yet by the time the visit was over, Freeman had gone through one of those "it just feels right" experiences. He says he accepted less scholarship money to come to UK than he was offered by the hometown Miami Hurricanes.

"I fell in love with Kentucky," the 26-year-old says. "I mean, I'm still here."

Puerto Rico?

Little boys who grow up in Florida tend to think football bowl games, not Olympic rings.

Even with his slight size, David Freeman was no different.

"He started playing Optimist League football when he was 7 years old," Booker Freeman Sr. said of his son. "He was never big, but he was extremely quick. And he always knew where everyone was supposed to be on the field, all the positions. The coaches always said David had a good mind."

By the time Freeman reached high school, football was still his passion. He was a wishbone halfback.

"He was tough," says Terry, who was both a Hialeah High football assistant and the school's track coach. "And he was the fastest kid in our school."

Still, 5-5, 125-pound halfbacks don't tend to have NFL futures. When Freeman was a sophomore, Terry talked him into trying track.

By the time he was a senior, Freeman was the 2000 Florida 4A state champion at 800 meters.

At UK, the success continued. Freeman set school records in both the indoor and outdoor 800 (the latter has subsequently been broken).