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EUGENE, Ore. -- Track Town USA has lived up to its billing.
The return of the U.S. Olympic trials to Eugene after a 28-year absence has produced the passion the city’s bid committee promised when it beat Sacramento, the 2000-2004 host, in the competition to host the event.
Not only that, but Eugene got a four-bagger: it also will have 2012 Olympic trials and the 2009 and 2011 national championships.
That is a valentine for a sport badly in need of love in the United States, what with doping
scandals involving almost two dozen of its leading athletes and diminishing interest among fans with exponentially more spectating options, live and on TV, than they had in 1980.
Remodeled Hayward Field (thank you, Nike) is a more splendid venue than ever for the sport, new-fangled video boards combining with the roofed grandstands that give it the classic look of the intimate soccer and track stadiums in mid-size European cities.
The fans -– a sellout of 16,350 every day so far -– are as knowledgeable as ever, especially about distance running.
What other audience would have been aware that Amy Begley was running not only for the third Olympic spot in Friday’s 10,000-meter final, but also the time standard necessary for her to use the spot? So they kept urging Begley on, knowing what was at stake after she dropped off the lead but was comfortably in third –- and she beat the clock.
Eugene’s reputation has drawn fans from all over the country to the trials, but the locals obviously make up a large part of the crowds in the only U.S. city to pay perpetual homage to a distance runner, Steve Prefontaine, who died in 1975 at age 24 in a car crash on a hill a mile from Hayward Field.
It was fitting that these fans, the ones who wear T-shirts saying, ‘Pre Lives,’’ the ones who have made the iconoclastic runner more myth than man (he never won an Olympic medal, and he had been drinking when he died at the wheel), got a special treat before the meet took a two-day break today and Wednesday.
Monday night’s men’s 800 final set the 89-year-old stadium rocking, as three runners with Eugene ties swept the three Olympic places. Two, Nick Symmonds and Christian Smith, train here; the third, Andrew Wheating, is a rising junior at the University of Oregon.
‘Seeing that race would make a track geek out of anybody,’’ said Alan Webb, who begins running for a place in the 1,500 meters with Friday’s heats.
-- Philip Hersh
