Olympic trials begin for U.S. athletes

If you haven't been paying attention to the run-up to Beijing, now's the time to start.

For eight days, starting today, Olympic trials in swimming and track and field will be going on simultaneously.

Trials like these are a dying breed. Most these days aren't based on pure results.

These trials have no mercy. They're do-or-die. They are sometimes cruel, unfair, capricious. They are black and white, yes or no, win or lose.

Simply put: Finish in the top three at track and field, and the top two in swimming, and you go to Beijing. Don't, and you won't.

Paul Hamm had surgery to repair a broken hand weeks before the gymnastics trials, and didn't compete. Yet, as other national squad members agonized over their scores at trials, Hamm was named to the Olympic team.

If he was a long jumper, it'd be "So long, Paul. See you in 2012."

You think finishing fourth in the Olympics is harsh? Try getting third at swim trials by a fingertip length, like Megan (Quann) Jendrick did in 2004. Hopes from four years of training evaporated in 11-hundredths of a second, the difference between second-place Tara Kirk of Bremerton and Jendrick in third. Jendrick, two-time gold medalist in 2000, stayed home from Athens.

The great thing about Jendrick is, four years later, she is back for the trials this week.

In essence, these type of trials don't care if an athlete wakes up injured, sick, or off his or her game. It's all about who reaches the finish fastest on that day. Is it the best way to pick a nation's top athletes for the Olympics?

Mountlake Terrace's Brad Walker, who competes in the Olympic trials' pole vault final today in Eugene, Ore., doesn't think so. Vaulting is such a high-wire act that he would support a coaches' selection to the team, or, to prevent politics from playing a role, some kind of seasonlong qualification process through a series of meets.

"You want your best team there, and every other country besides us, basically, sends their best team and they know who they are and they can [put] their money and effort into getting these guys ready for the Games," said Walker, a former All-American at the University of Washington.

World-champion distance runner Bernard Lagat said Eugene offers its own challenges. Namely, infamously intense grass pollen in June.

"People could go down with sinus problems," Lagat said.

Still, Lagat favors keeping the trials as is, he said.

"It is fair that way, even though [there are] athletes that are really good and have a bad day," said Lagat, who ran for Washington State. "Overall, it is a fair standard."

Fair or not, here are some of the more famous track and field trials and tribulations:

• Dan O'Brien, 1992. Half of the Reebok-promoted "Dan and Dave" decathlon pair, O'Brien entered the trials as the defending world champion and world-record holder in points. After passing on earlier pole-vault heights, he failed on three jumps and did not make the team. (He came back to win gold in 1996.)

• Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene, 2000. Prizefighter-like hype preceded the race for a week. The showdown was a blowout, with first Johnson, then Greene pulling up lame in the 200 final.

• Mike Conley, 1984. The Olympic triple-jump silver medalist appeared to jump 57 feet, 11 ¼ inches to top Robert Cannon's jump by an inch, but judges claim Conley's split-hemmed runner's shorts left a mark at 57-7. He finished fourth. (He won Olympic gold four years later.)

• Steve Williams, 1976. A medal favorite for Montreal, Williams pulled a muscle at the AAU championships before the trials. Experts consider him the best U.S. sprinter never to make an Olympic team.

• Jeff Hartwig, 2004. The American record-holder in the pole vault, Hartwig no-heighted in qualifying. The U.S. still went 1-2 (Tim Mack, Toby Stevenson) in Athens.

The cutthroat aspect of trials is what makes them agonizing, and great — often more intense than the Games themselves. So let the trials begin.

Still trying

Somewhere between Alcatraz and Des Moines, Bellevue triathlete Joe Umphenour had something of a change of heart. Turns out, he might not be retiring from Olympic-distance racing after all, even at age 39.

Due to a quadriceps injury in a warmup triathlon — the colorful "Escape from Alcatraz" where the course includes the famous island prison — Umphenour was a late scratch from a race in Des Moines, Iowa, the final of three Olympic trials qualifiers last week. The last of three Olympic berths, won by Hunter Kemper, was decided there, but Umphenour trailed too far on seasonlong points to be in contention for Beijing.

But the injury made him less certain about retiring than he was earlier this season.

Girlfriend Kai Cook, attempting to make the 2010 Winter Games in snowboard-cross, is trying to talk Umphenour into going for London in 2012. That's a long shot, considering his age and the fact he's already the oldest triathlete on the national team.

"I think that is something I have to wait to decide upon and I may just take two years off from the World Cup circuit for a break," he said, citing fatigue and expenses.

Another possibility is a position as a kind of player-coach for triathletes new to the elite circuit, coaching them from inside the race.

"An interesting thought," said Umphenour, "but we'll have to see."

NOTE

• You'd think at 13, Issaquah's Kate Kinnear would be in the running as youngest competitor at the Olympic swim trials that start today in Omaha. But no. Not only is Kinnear just one of (by our count) nine 13-year-olds, but Grace Carlson trumps them all. Carlson, who swims for the Lake Oswego (Ore.) club, is 12. She's entered in the 50-meter freestyle. Coincidentally, that's the same event that Dara Torres, the oldest swimmer in trials history at 41, is racing.

Meri-Jo Borzilleri can be reached at merijoborz@hotmail.com