7/17/08

By Brian Landman, Times Staff Writer
In print: Thursday, July 17, 2008

For sprinter Walter Dix, the athletic epiphany came when he was 9 years old and playing street football.

A "big kid," four years his senior, challenged him to a race. A mismatch, some figured. Not so much. Dix beat him by a lean, which was the moment he — and those in his Fort Lauderdale neighborhood — realized just how freakishly fast he was.