Day 8

Day 8 (07/05/08)
This was pretty much just a kick back day. It was my first day without wheels so I didn’t venture beyond the UO campus. Breakfast was the normal stuff yourself routine and then sit around the table and hash out what was going to happen at the track today. Things started happening around 11am o’clock with the 200 quarterfinals and one of those inauspicious heats produced the biggest surprise of the day. Tyson Gay was out to add the 200 title to his victory in the 100. Gay was running in quarterfinal #1 and everyone expected this to be a walk in the park for this guy that had just run the fastest 100 meters ever recorded. But, 50 meters into this race there was shock and awe as Tyson went tumbling onto lane 7 of this very fast Hayward Field track. In these trials there are no second chances and a DNF (did not finish) after his name on the results board meant that his aspirations for an Olympic double had just vanished. If Gay’s tumble resulted from a pulled hamstring, which he was grasping, it would mean the end of his track season but if it was a cramp, chances for a full recovery before the Olympics were good. Thankfully, at this point, it has been diagnosed as a deep cramp. Tyson will race soon but probably not soon enough to keep his appointment with Asafa Powell in London a few weeks from now. BTW, I just read in the paper this morning that Gay could earn up to 2 million dollars this year so, although you can’t run away from your problems, if you run right, you can run into some big money. Try getting up on a ladder and putting a mark on the wall that is 7 feet 6.5 inches from the floor. Now get off the ladder and look at that mark. Okay, are you looking at that mark? Imagine jumping up off the floor and flinging your body over that mark. Sound impossible? Try telling that to Jesse Williams who did just that. Williams, a transplanted USC high jumper who now calls Eugene his home, thrilled the home crowded with his first attempt clearance of 7’6.5” in the high jump. That was good enough to win and put him on the plane for Beijing. Steeplechaser Anthony Famiglietti ran away from the rest of the field until the last lap when William Nelson and Joshua McAdams sensed that a tired Famiglietti might not be able to hold on for one more lap and started their finishing kick in hopes of running him down. But the determined leader wasn’t going to go down easy. As a matter of fact, he didn’t go down at all and at the finish the 3 top runners were separated by only 1.5 seconds. After the race, Famiglietti said, “I got out and ran aggressively like I always do, whether that meant finishing dead last with dead legs or finishing first with dead legs. Luckily, it was first. You have to forget if you’re going to die.”