We just got back from our family trip to Eugene Oregon to see the US Track and Field Olympic Trials. It was an impressive and long event that lasted about 9 days.
The Olympic Trials determines who will make the Olympic team. Typically the top three competitors in each event make the Olympic team, although some of the competitors may choose not to compete in an event they qualified for (e.g., if they qualified for another event and wanted to concentrate on that other event), or if they didn’t make an Olympic standard.
Each day was filled with great events to see although the length of each days events was much longer than a typical sporting event. One day we were there for about eight hours. They didn’t allow us to bring any liquids or food into the event so we either had to eat there or eat before we went in. The food there wasn’t bad, but it was hard to find a place to sit at times.
Our favorite events were the Decathlon where we were rooting for local favorite Ashton Eaton, Hammer Throw, Long Jump, Triple Jump, Pole Vault, Heptathlon, Sprints and Hurdles (which basically sounds like everything). My wife managed to get a picture of my son with one of the qualifiers for the Women’s Hammer Throw, Deanna Price. She even let him wear her medal. We also got a picture with the Men’s Hammer winner, Rudy Winkler. Winkler didn’t automatically qualify for the Olympics because his throw was 9 inches short of the Olympic standard and he didn’t have a qualifying throw in the past year, but we were happy to hear that he was invited to the Olympics to fill one of the 9 open spots.
For us, the two most exciting events were the last two events we saw. We missed the final day of competition but on our last day we were treated to an incredible Men’s 5000m where local favorite Galen Rupp was trying to pull away from the crowd only to be caught on the last lap and then 41 year old Bernard Lagat sprinted at the end to win it and qualify for his 5th Olympics. My wife said that Lagat was really great as well and posed for a picture with my son with an American flag draped over his back right after the race. The last event of the day was the Men’s 110m Hurdles with local favorite and Duck football player Devon Allen running. At the time we were watching Devon Allen because he won by a pretty good sized gap and then proceeded to climb the fence to celebrate with his family and the rest of the stadium. In all of the excitement we soon realized that the rest of the race was incredibly close. They didn’t announce the 2nd and 3rd place finishers for maybe a minute after the race because it was so close. Of course being a 2nd or 3rd place finisher is critically important because only they (along with the winner) would qualify for the Olympic team. Ronnie Ash finished in second at 13.205 and Jeff Porter finished in third at 13.206. Aries Merritt finished in 13.22. Even the fifth place finisher finished in 13.28 and sixth place finisher finished in 13.30.
