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Richard Lovett gives you a first person look at the battles that took place at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.
Photos by Victah Sailor
Friday, June 27On paper, day one was one of the longest of the Trials, at nine hours. And with mid-afternoon temperatures heading for nearly 100 degrees, spectator attendance was sparse. Only one event in the day’s program was a final, the women’s 10,000 meters, but it would prove to be one of the best of the entire eight days.
It was expected to be a duel between American record-holder Shalane Flanagan and Portlander Kara Goucher. And in the still-warm evening, that’s exactly how the race set up – with the favorites content to hold back and play wait-and-kick in the final laps.
There were 22 others in the field, but from the start, the one who had my eye was Amy Begley. Another Portlander, Begley was one of six with a legitimate shot at the top three. But she had a problem: her PR was only 31:59.46. To go to Beijing, she also had to hit the Olympic qualifying standard of 31:45, and do it tonight.
By the halfway mark, I’d written her off. The split was 16:10, not even close to the needed pace. But Begley didn’t give up. She, Goucher, and Flanagan broke away and steadily picked up the pace. It was clear Begley was going to finish in the top three, and with each lap I tried to calculate how fast she had to go.
Not surprisingly, Begley was doing the same. “I was doing a lot of math in the last 800,” she admitted later.
Flanagan won, out-kicking Goucher by three seconds. Then, with the clock frozen at Flanagan’s time of 31:34.8, there was Begley on the straight – unsure whether she was within those crucial 11 seconds of Flanagan but knowing she’d regret it for the rest of her life if she didn’t give it all she had.
For several heart-stopping moments, nobody (including Begley) knew the result. Then it was official: she’d come across with 1.4 seconds to spare, having won the hearts of thousands with one of the gutsiest races I’ve ever seen.
“Amy is the story of the night,” Goucher declared after the race. Added Flanagan: “You could tell she wanted it bad.”
The Trials were off to a rip-roaring start.
The weather continued hot enough to melt most Oregonians. “I got excited when they told me it was going to be record-breaking,” said 100-meter runner Lauryn Williams, who took third behind Muna Lee and Torri Edwards. “I train at noon in Miami. If you can survive that…”
But today’s drama was mostly among the men. One man in particular: sprinter Tyson Gay. In the opening round of the 100-meter dash he took an easy lead then inexplicably shut it down too far from the finish and barely held onto fourth place, nearly getting knocked out of the trials in the first round.
Leaving the field, he blew though the press area without breaking stride, tossing back a comment that reporters trailing him deciphered as, “I just misjudged the white line.” Apparently, he’d mistaken the one-mile starting line for the finish, several meters farther down the track.
In the next heat, all eyes were on Gay. Would he choke? The answer was a resounding no. Instead, he ran 9.77 to break Maurice Greene’s 12-year-old American record.
“I was kind of mad there were two white lines out there,” he said. “But I talked to coach Drummond, and he basically said, ‘Champions don’t say that. Next time you step on the track, you look at the clock. You see the photo finish. You see the line, and that’s what you run to.’”
“So you had something to prove?” I asked. Yes, he agreed, but it had nothing to do with records.
“I wanted to prove that I run like a champion.”
I noticed that Eugene was taking the opportunity to show off its greenness. Recycling bins were everywhere and even the plastic forks, cups, and spoons were compostable (they were made of corn). Safeway had set up a booth with exercise bicycles connected to generators to provide several kilowatts of electrical power – an interesting idea for health clubs of the future.
On the track, the main event proved to be Tyson Gay’s resurgence. In the semifinals, he easily advanced. Then, in the final, he ran even faster than his day-old American record, blazing to the finish in 9.68. A tailwind kept it from being an official world record, but even wind-aided, nobody had ever before run that fast. Gay ran like a champion.
For most folks, day four will be remembered as the day of The Race. Anyone who watched the Trials knows the one I mean: the 800-meters final in which not one but three local favorites: Nick Symmonds (a graduate of nearby Willamette University), Andrew Wheating (a University of Oregon sophomore), and Christian Smith (of Oregon Track Club Elite) came from behind in the final meters. The result was fan enthusiasm that sounded more like a football game than a normal track meet – many said it was the loudest that Hayward Field had ever been, at least since the days of Steve Prefontaine.
There was also the final of the men’s 5,000 meters, where Kenyan-born Bernard Lagat demonstrated his trademark kick to win his first chance to represent the USA in the Olympics. Although Lagat has twice won medals for his native Kenya, he’s thrilled to run for his adopted country. “When I ran in 2004,” he said afterward, “I wanted to win, really, really bad. But I think now there’s even more motivation.”
When women come together for sport, great things can happen. 
