Dispatch from the Track: Thursday, July 3

The fan festival was packed as I entered Hayward...

8:07pm Women's 400m dash. I love how they call this a dash. It's not a sprint, it's not middle-distance hang-on-to-your-butts, nor is it a long slog. It's a one-lap dash that takes some amount of strategy. As one fellow 400m runners used to tell me: "Just hold back until the final 200 and then sprint it on home." Well, that's not such a great strategy, but sometimes conservative strategies win out (see: Nick Symmonds' and Andrew Wheating's 800m racing style).

In the women's final, it goes like this:

1. Sanya Richards;
   00:49:89
2. Mary Wineberg; 00:50:85
3. DeeDee Trotter; 00:50:88

Richards was way out in front, cruising through the race in a relatively slow time for her. But you knew all this. I'm being a lazy journalist.

8:13pm Right before the men's 400m final, they play footage of the U.S. sweep of the 400m at the 2004 Olympics, including Jeremy Wariner's victory. Strange for the athletes to see this right before their final. I think it psyched out Wariner. Or made him a bit too cocky.

As the sprinters "got on their marks," Wariner took his sweet time. Everyone else was at the ready while Wariner fixed the position of his sunglasses (really? Who needs sunglasses at 8 pm at night?) and adjusted his gold chain necklace. When they finally shot the gun, the rest of the field had been in position for at least five seconds more than Wariner.

At the 200m mark, Wariner is too relaxed and sluggish, hoping he can kick in a faster final half-lap. LaShawn Merritt has gone out perhaps too fast, but he's not holding back. On the homestretch he holds off a surging Wariner (who is missing that special inspiration that helped Wheating and Symmonds on their final kick) and wins in an competent 44 seconds. Wariner is 44.20 and David Neville is 44.61.

Wariner is pissed. Whoever wins gets all the cameras and Wariner's ego can't take the fact that he got second. He gives the other qualifiers the obligatory man-hug with a frown on his face and almost walks off before they usher him across the field to prep for the awards stand. Neither Wariner nor Neville will take a victory lap.

8:25pm Men's 1500m run. Six out of the 10 runners in each
heat will automatically advance, plus the four fastest qualifiers. Meaning: These races are just to weed out the bottomfeeders and the overpsyched. But even doing that didn't really weed out too many runners. Here are those who won't go on to today's semifinals (out of 30 runners who did):

25 Kyle King ZAP Fitness 3:45.63

26 David Torrence unattached 3:45.89

27 Sam Burley Asics 3:46.30

28 Brendan O'Keefe ZAP Fitness 3:46.84

29 Jordan McNamara Oregon 3:49.61

30 Andrew Acosta Oregon 4:07.81

To my mind, this doesn't make much sense. Run
three heats, get the runners all tired, and all to determine the six runners who will not race the next day. Seems kind of pointless. But maybe it's what the runners will have to deal with at the Olympics, so in the long run it's better to teach them to run qualifying heats with strategy. Or, it's pointless. But poor UO runners McNamara and Acosta… McNamara took the lead in his heat with one lap to go, using the crowd's roar to push him to the front. It was gutsy but it cost him, as he finished last. As for Acosta, he went down in the middle of the race (tripped, I think) but still got up and finished the race, albeit in half his speed. That was certainly honorable and should be noted and commended.

8:28pm A commercial for Zyrtec comes on the video scoreboard. The fans hiss.

8:30pm Men's 400m winner Merritt tells former Olympic decathlete Dan O'Brien that he just "wanted to come out here and put on a good show." You did well, Mr. Merritt. Perhaps you and Wariner should be the sideshow act at the Olympics, seeing who can put on a bigger frown in smileyface clown makeup.

8:40pm Men's 1500m qualifying heat #3. The fastest heat of
the day as Alan Webb (who has something to prove, obviously) comes in a blazing 3:41:27, forcing the rest of the field to follow suit (hint: Everyone in this heat qualified for the semifinals, even Bernard Lagat).

8:44pm People are puzzled over the Nike swoosh on the video
scoreboard. It keeps changing color in random fashion and two ladies to the side of me speculate on whether there's a pattern, perhaps red, white and blue? But no, it's multicolored. The crowd is growing restless and bored. Women's shot put qualifying is going on, they're setting up the steeplechase. Oh great! Two events that people, apparently, "don't give a shit about." There's a mini-exodus after the 1500m, but still plenty of people in the stands and outside in front of the Jumbotron.

9pm A short commercial/promo comes on the video scoreboard that interviews the Nike guy who designed the Eugene 08 logo, the video scoreboard and, apparently, the not-yet-revealed indoor track they plan on installing over the current site for the hammer throw. This guy also designed the Nike Air Max shoes (he modeled them after the Centre Georges Pompideau in Paris, he says).

What was interesting was that he said that he designed the
Eugene 08 logo with the swirly, "psychedelic" background to evoke Eugene's counterculture spirit, a "spirit of peace and love." Seriously? I thought it was just homage to Van Gogh. But apparently swirly patterns denote peace, love and understanding to his mind.

He discussed the design of the new video scoreboard, saying it's supposed to look like a runner running really fast, but failed to mention his real inspiration: the Holiday Inn billboard of the 1950s and 60s.

8:50pm Nobody gives a shit about steeplechase. That's not entirely true. There're still plenty of fans in the stands, but a massive exodus after the 1500m heats has left some spotty sections in the grandstands. I don't know why steeplechase doesn't get more respect. It's tougher and prone to way more crash and burns than any normal, unobstructed race on the track. For those in the dark, steeplechase runners have to run 7 1/2 laps while hurdling four balance beams and one water trap. If your leg gets caught on a hurdle (like the one of the runners in the men's prelim), you're going to fall flat on your face. Likewise, you don't want to get too much water splashback, as a soaked singlet is only going to slow you down. Also, it takes strategy in the steeple. You can't just draft off the shoulder of another runner, because there's this hurdle coming up and if you can't see it and judge your timing, you're going to fall on your face. So the runners generally give each other enough space.

Two cameras at the finish, in case one fails. But what if BOTH fail?

Looking like an Italian Jesus, the bearded Anthony Famiglietti wins his heat in 8:25. Famiglietti, or "Fam," as his fans call him, lives and trains alone in New York City. Unlike the Nike Oregon Project in Beaverton where the Kara and Adam Goucher, Galen Rupp and Amy Begley train (and sleep in oxygen-deprived cocoons at night), Famiglietti goes to sleep in Manhattan, noise-levels and all. And so he probably runs in gyms during the winter. Anyway, I thought that was interesting and novel. He even has his own website and has a film about him playing at the Running Film Festival. His website's intro page plays the Rage Against the Machine's hit, "Bulls On Parade," which, coincidentally, is the headline to this week's recap in print. Pretty cheeky.

9:20pm Women's 3000m steeplechase final. I move out to the fan festival area to watch this race on the Jumbotron. It's packed and seating is at a premium (yes, even for the steeple). While the "TrackVision" allows us to see the runners' faces (which is neat), it gives us no idea where in the race the runners (all the runners) are at. They have these super-zoomed shots where it looks like everyone's running in a pack. Then they zoom out and everyone is all spread out. Jennifer Barringer (who the announcer calls Jenny) has the Hayward Field record from Monday's prelims, and she leads the race for most of the way, but it's pink-haired Anna Willard who steals her glory by stepping up the final two laps (with Lindsey Anderson hot on her heels) and kicks it in to a new American record, just breaking Lisa Galaviz's record by about 3/4 of a second. (Galaviz looked solid but past her prime today, finishing in 9:48:27, which would've been the new Hayward Field record … had four other runners not run amazing, blazing races themselves.)

10pm A hip hop group takes the stage. The announcer(once again) pleads with people to stick around. And some do. But most don't.

The fans snuggle up in front of the Jumbotron.