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By Jack Pfeifer EUGENE, Ore. – Muna Lee, always a solid sprinter on some of those great LSU teams but rarely a champion, won the biggest race of her life here on a hot Saturday evening, winning the Olympic Trials 100 in a lifetime-best 10.85. The next four runners also broke 11.00.
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PHOTO BY VICTAH SAILER/ PHOTORUN.NET
Oregon in thrall: The Trials are here
By Jack Pfeifer
Photo on right by Kim Spir
PORTLAND, Ore. – A couple days ago, our postman – OK, postwoman – stopped on the front porch to chat. She knew we were going away for 10 days, because she was going to holding our mail, but didn’t know why.
“Vacation?” she asked.
“No, just going to Eugene.” Eugene, a college town 100 miles to the south, isn’t a vacation destination. “Going to the Olympic Trials,” I continued, hoping she didn’t think I was talking about a legal conference.
“Really?” She brightened up. “I wish I could go! You have tickets?”
Not only did my local postal worker know what they were, she was hunting for tickets, as if it were a sold-out concert.
Oregon is ga-ga for the 2008 Olympic Trials, just as they were in 1972, 1976 and 1980. Since then this great track meet has roamed around the country, roaming bands of tracksters thrust into their own diaspora: the sprawling L.A. Coliseum, the fetid swamps of New Orleans, the obnoxious future baseball park in Ted Turner’s Atlanta, and lately two turns at the plate for Sacramento, a midsize community that, while proud to host the event, switched its attention back to the NBA the moment the last starter’s gun had fired.
Eugene and Oregon are now the nation’s home to this sport, ever since Bill Bowerman, a tough, crusty native son, took over the university’s track program in 1949, started town all-comers meets, “invented” jogging, helped found Nike, and won four NCAA team championships. The first time they hosted the meet, at cozy Hayward Field – where the Ducks used to play football – they won the championship, in 1962. Two years later they hosted, and won, again. Those fans willed them home. In one, they scored 24 points in a single event, the javelin.
Bowerman is gone now, as is Steve Prefontaine, who died young after winning the 5,000 in front of adoring fans in the ’72 Trials. It’s a new era now, of course, but you can bet that the 16,000 who will fill Hayward Field every day beginning Friday will be both unusually generous in their appreciation for every performance – they know their track lore in Eugene – and fanatically supportive of their own.
There’s just one final the first evening, the women’s 10,000, and don’t be surprised if the locals quickly get behind Kara Goucher, a young woman from Minnesota and the University of Colorado. Why? Because she and her husband, Adam, live in Northwest Portland now. That local “edge” will be relentless the next 10 days.
Armory veterans will recognize Shalane Flanagan in that 10K. Flanagan set the American record in her debut race at the distance earlier this spring at Stanford. She ran at the Armory in high school for Marblehead, Mass. – ran well but nevertheless got beat in both the mile and 2-mile – and later she ran stirring anchors for UNC’s DMRs.
Now, she’s the favorite to make her second Olympic team. She’ll also be trying the 5K next week.
Chanelle Price is in action on Day 1 as well. Price, of course, set a national high school record on the Armory floor this winter, in the 500, and has taken on races of the highest calibre with aplomb. Price, a recent graduate of Easton Area H.S. in Pennsylvania, will be running the first round of the 800 meters, with semis Saturday and the final Monday. It will probably take a time under 2:00 to make the Olympic team. No high school girl has ever broken 2 minutes. Chanelle’s best this spring is 2:01.61, 2nd only to the late Kim Gallagher’s national record of 2:00.07, set 26 years ago. (The person she displaced in 2nd place on the all-time high school list? Mary Decker Slaney, who lives in Eugene and no doubt will be in the stands.)
The men’s pole vault also gets under way on Friday evening with qualifying. Approximately a dozen vaulters – about half the field – will advance to the final, to be held Sunday. One of the contenders is Rory Quiller, who went 18-6 ½ and won the NCAA indoor championship this winter for Binghamton University. To make the U.S. team, he’ll probably have to go 19 feet.
But then, that’s what everyone is here for: higher, faster, farther.
I’ll be writing from Eugene for the next week and a half, and in a few days will be joined by my New York colleagues, Tim Fulton and Chris Hunt. They tell me they’ve never seen a track meet in Eugene. They’re in for a treat.
As temperatures go into 90s
Trials open in Oregon
Photos below by Kim Spir
EUGENE, Ore., June 27 – Those beloved, rapturous, tearful Olympic Trials get underway here this afternoon at Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus. Bring your sunscreen.
It is a temperate climate here in the Willamette Valley, known for mild spring weather, but the forecast is for temperatures in the 90s all weekend. The Saturday and Sunday programs are daytime schedules, geared for telecasts on the East Coast.
The only final of Day 1 is the women’s 10,000 meters, scheduled to start at 9:30 p.m. Pacific time. By then, temperature should be in the 60s, comfortable enough for those runners, which will include favorites Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher. (Another contender, Jen Rhines, has withdrawn from the 10 to focus on the 5k next week.)
Flanagan broke the American record in the spring; Goucher was surprise bronze medalist at the World Championships last year in Osaka. Both have achieved the Olympic ‘A’ standard of 31:45.00. The only others runners in tonight’s field who have achieved the standard are Molly Huddle and Katie McGregor. Huddle, a New York state champion for Notre Dame (Elmira) and later star for Notre Dame, has run 31:27.12, McGregor 31:37.82.
 To make the team, in a complicated system, an athlete must be among the top three finishers who have made the standard. Unless another runner betters 31:45 in tonight’s race, the U.S. team will be comprised of the top finishers among Flanagan, Goucher, Huddle and McGregor. Anyone else would have to beat at least two of them and run at least 31:45.
The other final underway today is the women’s heptathlon, a two-day competition that begins at 1 p.m. with the 100 hurdles. There are 18 competitors. Pennsylvania native Hyleas Fountain and four-time NCAA champion Jacquelyn Johnson of Arizona State are the favorites.
Qualifying will also be contested in the women’s 100, triple jump, 400 hurdles, 800 and discus and the men’s pole vault, 400 hurdles, long jump, 800, 5,000 and shot put.
Among the runners in the 100 are Lynne Lane, of New Rochelle, who just finished an excellent sophomore season at Tennessee, and twin sisters Lisa and Miki Barber, from Montclair, N.J., who had college careers at South Carolina.
The women’s 800 includes two high school athletes, Laura Roesler, a sophomore from Fargo, N.D., who has run 2:03.08, and Chanelle Price, a senior from Easton, Pa., who has run 2:01.61.
Everyone in Eugene seems ready for this big event, being held here for the first time since 1980. It is a mix of the corporate sheen of Nike and other sponsors alongside the irreverence of a college town known for just that.
Security unprecedented for the city surrounds small, placid Hayward Field. All customers, athletes and officials must pass through metal detectors, a la airports, and police dogs roam the perimeter.
Housing is almost as hard to find as a place to park, although some locals are being creative about that even on the eve of the Trials.
At 17th and Villard, for example, a prime spot 3 blocks from campus, a hand-painted sign advertises “ROOMS/RENT HERE FOR OLYMPICS 520-4030.” (That’s “541” area code if you’re interested.) A few feet to the right, the amenities are listed, but instead of Wi-fi and Free Continental Breakfast, they are “No War * Good Food * Love.”
Street parking is almost nonexistent, but you can park for $30 a day at Delta Tau Delta at 19th and University. “We’ll give people a deal if they want to stay for the whole Trials,” a house member said.
As a result, ticketholders are encouraged to use alternative means of transportation. Free bus service is available, and, in that quaint Eugene way, free valet parking is available on 15th Avenue for bicyclists and skateboarders.
Muna Lee shocker: She wins 100 at Trials
 By Jack Pfeifer EUGENE, Ore. – Muna Lee, always a solid sprinter on some of those great LSU teams but rarely a champion, won the biggest race of her life here on a hot Saturday evening, winning the Olympic Trials 100 in a lifetime-best 10.85. The next four runners also broke 11.00.
READ MORE HERE
PHOTO ON LEFT BY VICTAH SAILER/ PHOTORUN.NET
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