Welcome to the club of youthful greatness and we've got you covered because you just know that there is nothing quite so sweet and seductive as athletic greatness achieved in youth. It is interpreted as both a statement for the present and an unspoken promise for the future. What is good now can surely be better later. Of course it's not exactly automatic.
The curve was on display Friday night at Hayward Field, on the sixth night of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials.
Hasay is the prodigy, 16-year-old, 5-foot-1 wisp of a young woman from Arroyo Grande, Calif. She came to the Trials in midweek uncertain if she would make the field for the 1,500 meters, but with a plane ticket to Poland in hand, where she would compete in the World Junior Championships. Instead, she has advanced through two rounds of the big 1,500 -- on Friday night she set a national high school record of 4:14.50 in her semifinal -- and will run as a longshot in the final on Sunday afternoon.
"I could hear the crowd screaming,'' Hasay, who just finished her junior year in high school, said after race. "It was so exciting.''
She's right. It was.
Webb can relate. In 2000 he was the prodigy, as he tried to end the United States' long drought between high school sub-four-minute miles. Track nuts followed his every move. "Everybody was watching on dialup AOL,'' Webb once said, laughing. He went under four minutes in January of 2001, in his senior year, and then in June crushed Jim Ryun's 36-year-old national high school record with an epic 3:53.43 in the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward. "I'm proud of what I accomplished in high school,'' Webb told me last summer. "If I never ran faster, that's still a great accomplishment.''
Jennings can relate. In 1997, he was Webb, chasing the sub-four and falling short. Writers gobbled up story of being raised by countercultural parents in Wisconsin. He went to Stanford, won two NCAA titles and the 2000 Olympic Trials in the 1,500 meters and then set off a personal odyssey that he says took him from California to Brazil on a bicycle and to Kenya, where he ran in a stadium in which, Jennings told me in the fall of 2005, "They had five heats of the 1,500 with 30 people in each heat and I I was the only white face in the stadium.''
They are at every different places on the curve. Hasay is full of joy. She won a Foot Locker national cross country championship when she was a freshman at Mission College Prep High School in San Luis Obispo, Calif. It is one of the toughest races a teenager can ever experience. She finished 10th as a sophomore and third last fall. She still has another year of high school and last night after the semifinals of the 1,500, she said the crowd at Hayward shouted, "Go to Oregon!'' (During her first-round race, fans on the backstretch chanted during her race: JOR-dan! JOR-dan. JOR-dan.
It is impossible to miss her in a race. She runs with a long ponytail, the longest pieces reaching past her waist. And she is beyond tiny. But she is learning fast. In the first round, she forced a fast pace and barely qualified. In the semifinals, she didn't chase older runners early, but passed two of them in the final 250 meters and qualified easily. "I tried to stay relaxed for the first two laps,'' she said. It was a very professional performance by a very young athlete.
She is a longshot in the final. But she has a very nice perspective on that, too. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me,'' she said.
Hasay is not the first precocious athlete to succeed at these trials. On the first weekend of the Trials, 16-year-old Laura Roesler of Fargo, N.D., who is a year behind Hasay in school, advanced through the first round of the 800 meters wearing a shirt bought at a Target store. (Hasay wore her Team USA junior nationals uniform). Andrew Wheating, 20, who has just finished his sophomore year at Oregon and only ran in his first track meet 27 months ago, finished a blazing second in the 800 meters, still the best race of the meet.
Much will now be expected of Hasay. That is the way it works. It starts with a crowd like last night's at Hayward and on television and on the message boards and in columns like this (I plead guilty as charged). The thinking goes like this: If she can run 4:14.50 as a 16-year-old still in high school, imagine what she will do later in her career.
Of course, sports are littered with stark examples of why improvement is neither linear nor guaranteed. It just happens that two such examples competed on the Hayward Field track just minutes before Hasay.
Webb's career has been examined here -- and elsewhere -- until fingers are sore from typing. Summarized: Great, then not, then very good, then not (and hurt), and last year better than anybody who has ever run the mile or 1,500 meters in U.S. history. (I wrote three days ago that if he retired on the spot he could still call his career a success and I stand by that; but I don't think that's his plan).
Webb advanced to the finals of the 1,500 on Friday night with a front-running, and then surviving effort in the slower of two semifinals. He has struggled with his fitness throughout the spring and early summer and seems to be trying to race himself sharp. On Friday night he bounced onto the track for the 1,500 and blistered a 150-meter sprint and then punched his stopwatch at the finish. It was a damn aggressive warmup move.
"It's something I do in my workouts,'' Webb said.
"You timed it,'' I said.
"I timed it,'' Webb confirmed, smiling wickedly.
Webb looked strong for some of the race, but struggled to finish easily. We probably shouldn't read too much into that. It's common for 1,500-meter qualifying races to get ugly in the last 100 meters. Survive and advance is the key.
Jennings advanced, too. He won the second 1,500-meter heat in 3:40.07, running smartly and strongly for the second consecutive time. Then Jennings ran through the media interview zone nearly as fast as he finished the race, stopping not for a second.
If this were the Gabe Jennings of years ago, this non-talking would be most newsworthy, because Jennings has always been a legendary talker. I remember covering him in a high school race in North Carolina when he missed his sub-four and shouted at his fellow racers, "We can do this!''
Three years later he went to the front of the Olympic Trials 1,500 meters in Sacramento and won the race impressively. That summer he ran a personal best of 3:35.21 (roughly equivalent to a 3:52 mile). In 2001 he made the U.S. team in the world championships in Edmonton, but after failing to advance to the final, told reporters there, "I'm on the same plane as these guys,'' he said. "I see fear in their eyes. I own Hicham El Guerrouj. In two years I'll be whipping all their butts.''
It was a foolish thing to say, even if Jennings believed it. In the ensuing years, Jennings says he explored life in ways that few people do. Writers occasionally dropped in and caught up with him. (Recently, John Brant wrote an exhaustive profile in Runner's World). He kept mind-bending journals and occasionally talked publicly about his wild experiences.
I came across him in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., in the fall of '05 when I was there to write about Meb Kefleghizi. "This is perfect here,'' he said, surveying the mountains, the sky. "This is just running.'' He was back and seemed committed. He plopped into a cold creek to cool his lower body. (Meb did, too).
Three years later, Jennings is not talking anymore, at least not yet, but he will be a threat in Sunday's final. According to Runner's World, he has been training in Eugene since May. "There's no doubt in my mind that he's going to be in the team,'' said world champion and two-time Olympic medalist Bernard Lagat, who is the overwhelming favorite in the race.
There is a catch. Jennings has not reached the Olympic 'A' qualifying standard of 3:36.60. Even if he finishes in the top three, he needs to run that time, or faster, to make the team. "His advisors are going to tell him he has to run fast in order to run 3:36.60,'' said Lagat.
This is Jennings' style, anyway. Lagat suggested that "somebody will go crazy with 500 meters to run.'' That somebody could be Jennings. It could also be Webb. Asked if he would lead the race again, he said, "We'll see.'' Their performances will be the most intriguing of the meet.
Meanwhile, Hasay will also run a final. That won't be intriguing to watch. Just fun. She's much earlier in the curve.
