{"id":517,"date":"2011-06-29T07:23:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=517"},"modified":"2011-06-29T07:23:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-29T14:23:00","slug":"nationals-recap-hurdles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"Nationals Recap – Hurdles"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

Before I start my recap of the hurdle events, let me say that the U.S. sprint hopes got a potential boost with the announcement yesterday that Lashawn Merritt will be allowed to use his bye to the World Championships. <\/p>\n

This move was sorely needed in my opinion, both to show that USATF is actually trying to work towards accomplishing something in Daegu, as much as to simply indicate that it is capable of doing the right thing for our athletes. <\/p>\n

The key here is that Merritt will only have about a month to get race sharp as he will not be eligible to begin competing until July 27th \u2013 exactly one month before the opening of the World Championships. If he can get race sharp, however, he could be in a position to bolster our 400 meter team as well as provide some veteran strength in the 4×4. August meets have just taken on some added meaning. <\/p>\n

Now, back to the recaps. <\/p>\n

Looking at the results, the core of our medals in Daegu should come from the hurdles. Because in each of the four events we have gold medal potential. <\/p>\n

The men\u2019s 110 hurdles boasts the current AR holder and #3 all time in David Oliver. Surprisingly, for the first time in a long time we are not sending a \u201cveteran\u201d squad to Worlds. That\u2019s because seemingly forever (at least back to the mid \u201890s) we\u2019ve always had at least a pair of \u201csuper\u201d hurdlers to count on \u2013 primarily because Alan Johnson and Terrence Trammell were always around. That streak ended with this meet as Trammell finally missed a team (after the retirement of Johnson just a couple of seasons ago). In his\/their stead we will have Aries Merritt and Jason Richardson. Both are talented, but yet to show the ability to get into that elite sub13.10 range typically necessary to compete for medals at this level. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s really the challenge to medaling in this event in Daegu, as this event contains the top three men in all of history. We have #3 in Oliver. They will be going to war against China\u2019s Liu Xiang (#2) and Cuba\u2019s Dayron Robles (#1). This is an event that could play out to be THE showdown of the meet on the men\u2019s side. <\/p>\n

Where we are young in the short hurdles, we have much experience and depth in the intermediate hurdles. Angelo Taylor won his first Olympic gold back in 2000. Bershawn Jackson a World gold in 2005. In the past half decade, Taylor picked up another Olympic gold (\u201808), and Jackson Olympic bronze (\u201808) and World bronze (\u201809), and Taylor took out time to pick up a bronze medal in the open 400 in \u201807. These guys know how to compete on the big stage. And so does their young compatriot, Jeshua Anderson. All he\u2019s done in his young career is pick up three NCAA championships, and NCAA silver, and win this year\u2019s USATF championship! Any of these men is capable of picking up the gold medal in South Korea.<\/p>\n

Their competition will be interesting. LJ Van Zyl (RSA) was on fire in the early spring and still leads the world on the clock. He\u2019s not faired well in head to heads since the outdoor season has gotten under way in earnest. Britain’s David Greene and Panama\u2019s Javier Culson are also formidable opponents \u2013 Culson taking silver in \u201809.<\/p>\n

So, how do we look for Daegu? I\u2019m thinking one medal in the 110\u2019s and two medals in the 400\u2019s. Oliver is as solid a medalist as we have heading into Korea. He\u2019s been consistently under 13 seconds in the past two seasons and only has two peers \u2013 Xiang and Robles. In the long hurdles the only issue is will someone from outside the US rise up to seriously challenge. The odds are that one or two will, but we have the horses to fight off most challenges. <\/p>\n

How about the women? Well we\u2019re pretty solid there as well. In the 100 hurdles we have three women who are just about as interchangeable as our men\u2019s 400 hurdlers. Surprising because just two years ago names like Lolo Jones and Damu Cherry were prominent when talking about our hurdlers. But Dawn Harper is a gold medalist in her own right having won in Beijing, and Kelli Wells and Danielle Carruthers have been dominating the yearly performance list to this point. So despite what appears to be a changing of the guard, we\u2019ve done so without a hitch \u2013 so far.<\/p>\n

Also surprising is that the opposition has been very quiet this year. Canada\u2019s Lopes Sliep is on maternity leave this year \u2013 explaining why she hasn\u2019t been prominent this year. But little noise has been made by the other usual suspects \u2013 Derval O\u2019Rourke (IRL), Brigitte Foster Hylton (JAM), Sally McLellan (AUS), Perdita Felicien (CAN) and Delloreen Ennis London (JAM). Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing!<\/p>\n

As for the 400 hurdles, our squad resembles the men\u2019s short hurdles squad. Lashinda Demus is one of the best all time (#5, #3 American). She also has experience with a silver in \u201805 bookending a silver in \u201809. We are young behind her, however, with Queen Harrison and Jasmine Chaney relatively new to this level \u2013 though Harrison did make the \u201808 team and the semis in Beijing before bowing out in 7th. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the youngsters this event has a solid cast of international competitors including: Kaliese Spence and Melaine Walker of Jamaica, Bulgaria\u2019s Vania Stambolova and Russia\u2019s Natalya Antyukh \u2013 with Walker the defending World and Olympic champion.<\/p>\n

So, what do our women\u2019s prospects look like in the hurdles? I\u2019m thinking two medals in the short hurdles and one in the long hurdles. The competition really seems to be lagging in the 100 hurdles. Of course everyone could be peaking for Daegu, but by this time of the year, there really should be more women in that 12.5\/12.6 range. And there is also the potential for our women to get better. In the long hurdles we\u2019re going to e depending on the consistency of Demus to get us a medal \u2013 potentially gold.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I see as of right now. Out of twelve potential medals I think we have the ability to garner six of them. That\u2019s fifty percent, and the best haul of medals in any group of events. Which is why I say the hurdles should be the core of our medal haul in Daegu. Next I\u2019ll take a look at the Middle and Long distances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I start my recap of the hurdle events, let me say that the U.S. sprint hopes got a potential boost with the announcement yesterday that Lashawn Merritt will be allowed to use his bye to the World Championships. This move was sorely needed in my opinion, both to show that USATF is actually trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa3DCY-8l","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}