Running: Too Much Talent for One Team

Friday, November 02, 2007 - 10:51 PM

With runners like these, American Olympic hopes are high again

To hear the favorites to make the U.S. Men’s Olympic Marathon team talk about their lives, their hopes, and one another is to wish that there were ten qualifying spots. But there are only three, and that cutthroat format makes it coldly true that among Alan Culpepper, Ryan Hall, Abdi Abdirahman, Dathan Ritzenhein, and Brian Sell, at least two will not be on the U.S. Olympic team for Beijing next year.

These five men sat at a news-conference table yesterday and talked about how their many recent great races are part of a communal effort of sorts; about how they inspire and learn from one another. They are in some ways clearly a team already: the New Americans, the athletes who will, as New York Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg put it, “make people stop asking, ‘What happened to American distance running?’” And as they spoke, beneath the sincere camaraderie and mutual respect at the table lay the intensity of their desire and their rivalries, soon to be played out in the single, defining race now looming only one day away.

Each of the five has a claim to be a favorite to qualify, as do two men not at the table who have the most distinguished credentials of all: the current American and former world record-holder, Khalid Khannouchi, and the defending Olympic silver medalist, Meb Keflezighi. All of them have confidence and strained nerves, faith and fear.

Alan Culpepper has won this race before, and he is perhaps the most relaxed. At age 34, with a 12th-place finish in the Athens Olympic marathon behind him, and with his wife Shayne, herself an Olympian, expecting their third child, he may seem to have less to prove. Yet he has just established a new training group advised by Steve Jones of Wales, a former marathon world record-holder. “I haven’t let myself start thinking I’m too old to win,” he said; “Steve ran 2:10:06 at age 37.” Culpepper’s unthinking choice to say “win,” rather than merely “qualify,” points at a mindset that has gotten him a U.S. Cross Country Championships title this year already. The defending champion does not look ready to yield the crown easily.

Abdi Abdirahman, whose family emigrated from Somalia when he was a child, has a well-known sense of oddball humor, but it vanishes when he talks about his life now. “The other day I went for a run from my beautiful home [in Flagstaff, AZ], and then I made a great breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and orange juice, and I sat there looking out the window and thought about Somalia. And tears came into my eyes. People are living in mud houses with no water there, and I have this life. Nothing is hard next to that. In this race, near the end when it gets tough, I’ll think about that. How hard can it be to run a lap of Central Park?” Considered the favorite by many on the strength of his 2:08:56 at the 2006 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon and a string of excellent races this year, he was asked if he would let anyone break away early and build a lead. His answer was immediate. “No. I’ll go with any break. I want one of those spots.” It was very easy to believe him.

Brian Sell is the man widely expected to make such a break. Behind him are four years of incredibly dedicated effort: often 160 miles of running per week for months at a time. He almost stole the race in 2004—he led up to the 21-mile mark—and after a 4th-place 2:10:55 in the 2006 Boston marathon, everyone knows who he is this time. Getting there has taken a toll: “It’s definitely my last chance at the Olympics. If I don’t have a good race, knowing what I put into it, this could be my last one,” he said. Told that his Hansons-Brooks Distance Project teammate Clint Verran predicted that he would win, he said, “I’m more of an expect-the-worst, hope-for-the-best kind of guy. I just hope I’m there with three or four miles to go.” Sell is admired for overcoming a lack of track credentials to become a world-class marathoner through sheer hard work, and he will be very unlikely to change his ways tomorrow.

Dathan Ritzenhein has run one marathon, and it did not go well; late in the ING New York City Marathon 2006, he dropped far back from the lead pack. He’s also been in one Olympic Games, and it did not go well; in 2004, an injury forced him out of the 10,000 meters in Athens. His accomplishments virtually everywhere else have been of the highest caliber: He defeated the two-time defending champion, Craig Mottram, to set a Central Park course record at the 2007 Healthy Kidney 10K, and he made it to the 2007 IAAF World Championships of Athletics 10,000 meters this summer in Osaka. He has been at the top of the sport in high school and in college, and he is very close as a pro. “You have to go where your strengths are, he said recently. “A guy like me, who’s a born marathoner, is going to do this event.” He also said, “I need to get back to the Olympics.”

After years of near-greatness at the mile and the 5000 meters, Ryan Hall began to realize where his athletic future lay when he pulled away from the best long-distance runners in the country at the 2006 USA Cross Country Championships 12K in Van Cortlandt Park, New York. He finished all alone in front on the hilly, multi-loop course, and had a revelation: “This is what I’m supposed to do. I love running far, and I don’t mind running alone. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier.” What followed has been one of the most remarkable emergences in memory: In his first-ever half-marathon, the 2007 USA Championships, he took more than a minute off the American record with his 59:43. No longer an unknown quantity in his debut marathon, he rose to the occasion at the 2006 Flora London Marathon and, running with a formidable lead pack of marathon champions, even pushed the pace from the front for several miles. His 7th-place 2:08:24 is the U.S. debut record and the fastest time by an American this year. Now, in another race on a hilly, multi-loop course in New York, is there any scenario that doesn’t include Ryan Hall in the top three?

The regrettable aspect of this fastest and deepest U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Men’s Marathon in history is that many very deserving world-class athletes will be left home. The beauty of it is that the three who can stay at the front of this field will be true, tested contenders for Olympic medals. Producing such athletes has always been the goal of the Olympic Trials race, and with this long-awaited resurgence in American distance running, it will again serve its intended purpose in New York City on November 3.

It is also fairly sure to be one of the most exciting and emotional competitions that any of us has had the privilege to watch.