After 3 days of track and field, what to say ...
Athens in August is not California in April. A bunch of U.S. and N.Z. athletes who ran Olympic qualifying times at the Cardinal Invitational (Dathan Ritzenhein and John Henwood) and the Mt. Sac Relays (Shalene Flanagan and Kim Smith) didn't do so well. Cool California nights are ideal for running quick times, but bear little resemblance to the humidity of Athens.
Flanagan and Smith did not appear to have awful races, but were well down on qualifying for the finals; hopefully both will be around in 2008.
On the other side of the ledger, Deena Kastor's bronze! Wow. What a well-paced race, and an amazingly quick finish. Kastor appears to be one of those athletes who has worked hard, and reaped the benefits. (Click on the athletes' names for a bio, which often has a performance progression chart).
Posted by robe0419 at August 22, 2004 04:18 PM | TrackBack