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As I write this, there are fireworks going off over Hayward Field while various patriotic tunes play over the loudspeaker. It's a fitting close to my Olympic Trials experience. The Trials aren't over, but I'm going home tomorrow, and tonight's women's 5,000 and men's 10,000 finals were a good note to end on.
I'll start with the women's 5,000. Just what I feared—hours later, we still don't know who made the team. I swung by the press conference ever so briefly, just to hear Shalane Flanagan say that she is leaning towards just doing the 10,000 in Beijing. She has until Sunday to decide. Kara Goucher wasn't around at the time, but I'm sure that question will come up and we'll be able to read about what she had to say tomorrow. More likely than not, Lauren Fleshman, the fifth place finisher, is also on the Olympic team, but I'm sure these are not the circumstances under which she wanted to make her first Olympic team. She doesn't get to participate in any of the post-race celebration or the awards ceremony, and the crowd doesn't get to celebrate having one of "their own" on the team. Fleshman was surprisingly absent from the lead pack once the race really got going, but because she has the Olympic "A" standard and fourth place finisher Sara Slattery does not, she will most likely be representing the U.S. in Beijing.
Though you can't necessarily tell it from looking at the results, there were several women who don't have the "A" standard of 15:09.00 who tried to keep the pace going throughout the race. Molly Huddle was one of the runners who went for it, then ultimately paid the price. Up front, it was a great race, Though Jen Rhines and Flanagan seemed pretty disappointed not to have won the race, I was impressed with the closing speed all of them displayed. Of course, if they're going to compete with the world's best, they're going to have to do even better than that, but they all had nice speed at the end. It's nice to know we're sending our best 5,000 and 10,000 meter runners to Beijing. Their last three 400s, according to USATF, were unofficially 66, 66.5, and 65.5 (for Goucher). One thing I love about the Hayward Field crowd is that the announcer can mention that the leaders just split 65 or 66 seconds, and the crowd will go wild. In many places, the majority of the people in the crowd don't really understand what that means. It would have been a more exciting race, in my opinion, if they had started pushing a little sooner, but they put on a good show. Kara Goucher had a quote the other day along the lines of, "I never win anything, but I'm always out there celebrating like I did." (In Osaka and after the 10,000 final.) Well now she has won something, and I'm sure she was a star, as always, in her post-race press conference,
It has to be a bittersweet evening for Kara Goucher, because as she was celebrating her win, her husband Adam was running his way to a seventh place finish in the 10,000 final. Only one Goucher will be competing in Beijing.
The men's 10,000 was a good race, and it was nice to see the runners moving along at a decent pace. The three runners who made the team, Abdi Abdirahman, Galen Rupp, and Jorge Torres, already had the Olympic "A" standard, but they also ran it in tonight's race. The trio broke away early enough in the race that there wasn't much drama there. The dramatic part came when it looked like, for a few laps, the chase pack might work its way back up to the leaders. James Carney was instrumental in getting things going around this time, even though his sixth place, 27:58.81 finish doesn't necessarily suggest that. Adam Goucher also hung tough. He and Carney put a lot of effort into narrowing the gap, which is probably why they didn't have as much closing speed at the end. Ultimately, they were unable to make a big enough dent, and no one up front faltered.
Galen Rupp is no Andrew Wheating, but he still gets a huge reaction from the crowd. Any time he got near the lead, the crowd went crazy. He challenged Abdirahman with two laps to go, but Abdirahman had another left. As fun as it would have been to see the crowd's reaction to a Rupp victory, Abdirahman did most of that work in the race, so it was nice to see him win. Abdirahman has always had a fun spirit about him, which was evident when he jumped in the steeplechase water pit on his victory lap.
As was the case with the women's 10,000, I was happiest for the third place finisher—Jorge Torres, in this case. He often gets overlooked, and even after I have conversations with people about how he is often underrated, we then proceed to overlook him again. I think a lot of people were expecting someone else in that third spot on the team, but at the same time, his third place finish is a pretty predictable/obvious outcome. It was fun to see him celebrating with his twin brother, Edwardo, who finished 11th in the race. I was sitting near someone who was providing updates about the Torres brothers' progress throughout the race, via cell phone. (It must have been frustrating to be on the other end of the call when she told the caller, "He's running behind the Nike guy." That narrows it down...barely.) Galen Rupp was under a lot of pressure here, and he silenced his critics...or at least some of them.
To be completely honest, despite the good distance races we had tonight, my favorite moment of the day was watching the crowd's reaction to Jordan Hasay. As she moved up in the final 200, the crowd went crazy, and she seemed to feed off of it. She passed several runners and took fifth in her semi, which advances her to the final. Apparently she doesn't need to leave for World Juniors until Monday, so she will be competing in Sunday's final. Hasay's time of 4:14.50 destroys the old high school record (held by Christine Babcock, who faltered a bit and took ninth in the same heat in 4:20.00), but it is probably still inferior to Polly Plummer's high school mile record. Hasay has had a lot of pressure on her since early in her running career, with many predicting her eventual demise. She just keeps proving them wrong, adapting as a runner, and getting better. It's nice to see so many high school kids making a splash at this meet.
Shannon Rowbury, Lindsey Gallo, Christin Wurth-Thomas, and Erin Donohue have looked great in both of their 1,500 races so far. I was surprised to see Treniere Clement struggling a bit today, and I hope she was just having a slight off day, because on her best days, she capable of beating anyone in the field. On the men's side, it looked for a momement like Alan Webb might be in trouble as he headed up the homestretch, but had about half a second to spare at the finish. Bernard Lagat is still an overwhelming favorite, in my book, but I have to say that Lopez Lomong has looked really good during the rounds. Leo Manzano hasn't looked as good as I would have expected, but maybe he is saving his extra gear for the final. Gabe Jennings is also looking surprisingly good, and I may have to adjust my view of whether or not he can contend for a spot on the team. I could imagine a scenario in which he finishes in the top three, but I'm not sure he would also get the Olympic "A" standard in the process.
I am really looking forward to watching the remainder of this meet on TV. (Assuming they actually show the whole race, you can actually see more on TV than you do from the finish line. The atmosphere at Hayward Field makes up for the sometimes poor sightlines.) I will be heading to the airport in about four hours, so I'm going to try to at least take a nap before that. I have approximately one zillion photos that still need to be edited, so I am going to work on that as much as possible over the next two days, while also flying across the country, unpacking, and repacking to leave for Kenya on Monday. I'll do my best, but there's a chance that some of my Trials photos will not be posted until August.
Posted by Alison Wade at 11:57 p.m. | Tags: 2008 Olympic T&F Trials
Alison commented, on July 5, 2008 at 10:30 p.m.:
Actually, according to USATF
http://www.usatf.org/events/2008/Olympic...
Torres did have the "A" standard coming in. He ran it last year.
Baatan commented, on July 5, 2008 at 12:04 p.m.:
J. Torres did not have the 'A' standard coming in. So glad he got it in the race just like Yoder-Begley!