UW alum leading pole vaulter at U.S. trials

Published 12:22 am Saturday, June 28, 2008

EUGENE, Ore. — University of Washington grad and Mountlake Terrace resident Brad Walker leads all pole vaulters after preliminaries at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.

Competing at the same track where he set the U.S. record less than three weeks ago, Walker led with a mark of 18 feet, 4½ inches (5.6 meters).

Finals in the event are Sunday.

“The goal was to take as few jumps as possible and be ready to go on Sunday,” Walker said. “The crowd is great. The fans are very supportive.”

With one brilliant burst, Marshevet Hooker put her name alongside those of Florence Griffith-Joyner, Marion Jones and Evelyn Ashford.

Hooker ran a wind-aided 10.76 seconds to win her 100-meter quarterfinal Friday at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, tying her with former world record-holder Ashford as the fifth-fastest woman in all conditions.

“I heard the time first,” said Hooker, an NCAA champion at Texas. “I was like, ‘Wow!”’

Then, though, she heard the wind speed: 3.4 meters per second, above the 2.0 that’s allowed for a time to count as a personal best or official record.

Still, only world-record holder Griffith-Joyner, Jones, Christine Arron and Merlene Ottey ever have run faster, regardless of wind. That impressed the other women in what’s considered a talented field, with more than a half-dozen legitimate contenders for the three 100 berths on the Beijing Games roster.

“She was fast. Real fast,” said Torri Edwards, the 2003 world champion in the 100. “I hope she’s tired.”

The first athletes to secure their Olympic team berths came in the women’s 10,000, led by winner Shalane Flanagan in 31 minutes, 34.81 seconds, breaking the Hayward Field mark set by Mary Slaney in 1982. Kara Goucher and Amy Begley also earned trips to Beijing.

Edwards won her 100 heat in a wind-aided 10.85, while Carmelita Jeter advanced by winning her heat in 10.97. Allyson Felix, hoping to compete in four events in China, was second to Jeter in 10.98, and 2004 Olympic silver medalist Lauryn Williams finished behind Hooker in 10.86.

Hooker also had the fastest time of the opening round Friday, a wind-aided 10.94.

One woman who did not make it out of the 100 quarterfinals was Chryste Gaines, who clocked 11.15 in the first round but finished seventh in her next race.

Gaines, a two-time Olympic relay medalist, was banned for two years in December 2005, a punishment based not on a positive drug test but on evidence gathered in the criminal investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative and the testimony of fellow sprinter Kelli White.

Gaines was among dozens of athletes who testified in 2003 before a federal grand jury probing BALCO.

She also was part of the series of athletes whose scandals and suspensions placed a cloud over the sport, a cloud that Felix and others are hoping to lift.

“We paved the way for them. That’s why they get the money they get. We don’t get those props,” said Gaines, who noted she’s still friends with former BALCO head Victor Conte.

In preliminaries for other events, past national champion and 2004 Olympian Walter Davis fouled on all three attempts and did not advance in the long jump; 2000 Olympic gold medalist Angelo Taylor and reigning world champion Kerron Clement advanced in the 400-meter hurdles. Bernard Lagat, who won medals for Kenya at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Games, took the first step toward making his first U.S. Olympic team by reaching today’s semifinals.