The US National Championships concluded yesterday and all the results are in. With the meet serving as the selection process for August's World Championships, the immediate question is - how will we do? There are six weeks until the start of competition on August 15th - so relatively speaking its just around the corner Read More...

Day Two continued with lots of qualifying rounds, but there were several finals including the men's and women's 100 and 5000 meters. In the women's 100 Carmelita Jeter remained unbeaten winning the title in a blazing 10.78w. The victory was not easy however, as last year's Trials winner, Muna Lee made a rush to the finish in the final 30 meters that brought her to within Read More...

While scanning the internet for articles on this week's National Championships, I came across an article in the Oregonian that really took me by surprise. While host city Eugene prides itself as being "Track Town USA", the primary paper in the larger City of Portland talked about the National Championships and our top athletes as if this were the opening night of a theater production!The writer, Ken Goe, calls several athletes "arrogant and short sighted" because they are not competing in their primary events, or in some cases only one round, because they have byes to the World Championships as defending champions! He says, sarcastically that "If the people who have packed into Hayward feel cheated, well, hey, the athletes have their own careers to think about" Read More...

The first day of any National Championship is full of qualifying rounds - and this year's US Nationals was no exception. The goal on Day One is to qualify and make it to Day Two. So typically the first day is very low key - and such was most of yesterday's competition, low key. A lot of the big news happened off the track as leading decathlete, Brian Clay, middle distance hopeful, Andrew Wheating, and leading hurdler David Oliver, were all forced to withdraw from the meet due to various injuries Read More...

The starting lists are all set and starting at 11:00am PST with the start of the decathlon, the US Nationals opens up its weekend run. With all final declarations being in the books and heat sheets done we finally have some answers regarding who is going to do what.Tyson Gay is entered in both sprints - drawing lane 2 in heat 1 of the 100 and lane 6 in heat 2 of the 200 Read More...

Willie Davenport, Rod Milburn, Greg Foster, Roger Kingdom, Edwin Moses, Kevin Young. The US has a long a rich tradition of hurdlers in international competition. Eugene will see some fierce competition among those who want to be next in line to continue that tradition. Along with the sprint events, the hurdle events provide us with a large majority of medals in the Major meets Read More...

An area where we once could count on medals internationally, in recent years we've come up dry. Bernard Lagat becoming an American citizen provided us with 1500 gold in Osaka in '07, but prior to that we have to go back to the 1999 World Championships to find a World Champs medalist, or even finalist as Jearl Miles Clark was 4th in the 800 and Regina Jacobs won silver in the 1500 Read More...

When looking at the US medal count in the Olympic Games or World Championships one of the most critical areas is the sprints - along with the hurdles. We tend to be out matched in the middle and long distance events, but regularly garner medals in the shorter events. So performances in Eugene in these events will go a long way towards how many potential medals we will pick up in Berlin Read More...

What happens at Nationals doesn't stay at Nationals - it has a profound effect on what happens at Worlds. Look no further than last year's Olympic Games where the first round of last year's Olympic Trials 200 determined the fate of the men's sprints in Beijing. This year's National Championships has the usual high number of stories but there are a half dozen that I think could have profound impact on the global scene Read More...

Olympic Champion David Robles(CUB) and Bershawn Jackson (US) ran to world leading times of 13.04 and 48.32 in the men's 110 and 400 meter hurdle events to lead a handful outstanding performances in Ostrava. Robles cruised to an easy victory on the track where he set the WR (12.87) in last year's meet winning easily over runner up Dexter Faulk's (US) 13 Read More...