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One 3:40 a.m. wake up call and three flights later, I'm home. While Anthony Famiglietti, Billy Nelson, and Josh McAdams were running their way onto the Olympic team, I was probably flying over New York. Now that I'm back in Massachusetts, I'm feeling very nostalgic for Eugene '08. As soon as my last flight landed, I called to get an update on what had happened in the men's steeplechase final. Anthony Famiglietti making the team is a pretty predictable outcome, but and while we knew there would probably be surprises in this race, we didn't know who they would come from.
I admit that when I read this article about Billy Nelson back in June, I thought, "Billy Nelson runs the steeplechase?" (I should have known that since he was fourth at NCAAs last year, but I skipped the meet and apparently didn't pay a lot of attention to the results beyond who won.) But then I saw him run at NCAAs this year, and I knew that he was as good as the article suggested. I was pulling for him throughout the NCAA meet, and I was a little surprised that he did not win. He lost a tight homestretch battle to Arizona State's Kyle Alcorn. I was impressed with him in the semis at the Trials as well, and I am glad that I mentioned this to someone the other day, because he congratulated me on my prediction this afternoon. If you read that article about Nelson, you'll learn that he is only 5'5", he has a nearly one-year-old child, and he works (worked?) 20-25 hours a week at Boulder Blockbuster. If he hasn't already quit his job, hopefully his new sponsor, Nike, is paying him well enough that he will be able to now. Now that CU has put two steeplers on the Olympic team, does that mean they've overtaken BYU as the NCAA steeplechase power?
We gave Josh McAdams a fair amount of coverage when he won an NCAA title in 2006. Here's a quote from that interview: "Before I came to BYU, I never even dreamed of going to nationals. And now, being a national champion, I don't think I could live with myself and say no [to trying to make the 2008 Olympic team]. So I'm going go out there and see what I can do." Two years later, he's done it.
Due to very short layovers and limited laptop battery life, I don't have many photos to post today. I am going to spend much of tomorrow attempting to post everything I can, so stay tuned for that.
[Update: I finally got to watch the men's steeplechase final online. What an exciting race. The results never tell the full story. In addition to the guys who made the team, Dan Huling, Brian Olinger, and Jake Morse really went after it and hung in there for a while. Olinger ran particularly tough, but it's always easier to be the hunter than the hunted.]
Posted by Alison Wade at 10:23 p.m. | Tags: 2008 Olympic T&F Trials