Olympic hopefuls set for Team Trials

Jun 27, 2008 - 7:32 PM By Simon Lewis PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

EUGENE, Oregon (Ticker) -- It is now or never for America's brightest track and field stars as the United States Olympic Team Trials get under way at Hayward Field on Friday night.

Four years of preparation, hopes, dreams and sacrifice will go to the line over the next nine days as runners, jumpers and throwers bid to earn a spot on the Team USA plane bound for Beijing in August.

They will also do so knowing those years can come to nothing in a split second for there are no margins for error and no second chances at these trials. Only those securing the first three places in each event, and having met the Olympic qualifying standard, will make the team.

"Our system is fortunate for those three who make the team, and it's unfortunate for everyone else trying to make the team," said Jeannette Bolden, the U.S. Olympic women's team head coach.

Bolden knows what it is like to finish on and just one place off the podium, having won gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics for the 4x100 relay and fourth in the individual 100 meter at the same meet.

"I'll say this, you are going to see the best and the brightest in track and field," she said. "Whether or not they make the team, you are going to see the best and the brightest, and that's what this is about.

"The athletes will be well supported and the fans will get to see track and field in its truest sense. The individuals know they can't blame it on anyone else, it's just you and the clock."

Understandably, that adds an enormous amount of pressure to an already tense meet.

"I'm just hoping to go out there and stay calm," two-time World Outdoor 200 meter medalist Wallace Spearmon said Thursday as he prepared for his first major 100 meter race in the heat Saturday.

"I'm going to treat this like an important track meet, but still any other track meet. I'm going to do my best. I'm going to leave everything on the track."

Nowhere is the intensity of the trials more evident than in the 100 meter sprints, which will dominate the opening weekend of events at the historic Hayward Field, considered by many athletes as the spiritual home of American track and field.