Back into overdrive then for the last showdowns of the US Olympic Track and Field trials at Sacramento. A hectic two days provide 13 finals and see some of the biggest names in the sport lay their reputations on the line. Throw in another five finals being held early Saturday morning (late Friday in California) and you have an attrition rate which turns the trials into the athletic equivalent of the Somme. After a midweek break of two days and an evening devoted chiefly to the lacklustre tread of the decathlon competition (at last count Chris Huffins was beating Tom Pappas. Pick either of them from a line-up and win a prize!), the trials return in their full fury with animosity, boasting and heartbreak aplenty.
It also marks the return of the M&Ms, as the Americans are calling the fleet trinity of Maurice Greene, Michael Johnson and Marion Jones, all of whom compete in high-profile finals tomorrow. The return of the A list stars should provide a rousing climax to a meet which has already sparked good television ratings and inspired talk of a revival in the dismal domestic interest in track and field.
The competition has been brimful of good stories and hard drama, and the feeling is abroad that it cannot be another four years before US audiences are provided with a similar experience. While waiting for the finale, the organisers have been taking care of more mundane business. The only track final decided on Thursday night was the 3,000 metres steeplechase, a chance for America's competitors to say hello and goodbye. The race was won by Pascal Dobert, the current US champion, who stalked his predecessor, Mark Croghan, through the second half of the race before making his move at the bell. Popular sentiment willed the victory to Croghan, whose 10-month-old son Griffin has just been released from intensive care after treatment for congenital heart problems. Croghan goes to the Games anyway, and afterwards he spoke of the perspective which bad times had induced.
"I was nervous, but it wasn't the old door-die feeling that I used to have. I tried to concentrate, but you can't put other things out of your mind."
The American track community also said goodbye to one of its great heroes, Johnny Gray, who discovered at 40 that one of the track's most punishing disciplines, the 800 metres, was too much. Especially in today's environment. "I've been doing this a long time," he said, "I've had to run against drug users - I'm not going to mention names but they've told me, told me they were taking stuff, they've asked me to try the stuff. I'm proud to have been a drug-free athlete for two decades."
His time in Sacramento had the quality of a quixotic tilt at a windmill. Gray's sentimental lap of honour and hour-long autograph signing session were the marks of the affection in which he is held.
Meanwhile, the javelin final unfolded as a major disappointment. Tom Pukstys, the US record holder and hot favourite, could manage only a throw 25 feet short of his personal best to finish runner-up to Breaux Greer, whose winning hoist of 266 feet is still three feet short of the Olympic A qualifying mark. Unless Greer can throw 269 by September 7th the US will be unrepresented when the spearchucking begins in Sydney. This weekend, woman about town Marion Jones gets back into her working clothes after a series of press conferences and personal appearances. Jones has the 200 metres segment of her Olympic ambitions to tend to, and Inger Miller, whose rivalry with Jones has become increasingly bitter, promises to make a serious race out of tomorrow's final.
Miller has been incensed by the ceaseless suggestions that her 200 metres world championship win in Seville last year would never have occurred had Jones been in the race. The race will be Jones' first tilt at the 200 metres distance this season.
"No problem," she says, "this is my speciality."
And of course the highlight of the weekend will be tomorrow's 20 seconds or so of silence in the battle of boasts between Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene. After weeks of trash talking and schoolyard strutting, the event, which was described this week by Jon Drummond as being the "Ali-Frazier of sprinting", gets under way for 200 metres-worth of pumping fury.
Despite having lost to Greene last time out in 1998, Johnson remains the slight favourite; but the statistics which each runner brings to the race are tantalising.
Nobody has been under 44 seconds for the 400 metres more times than Johnson, who has been there 22 times. Greene, the fastest man ever over 100 metres, has been under 10 seconds for that event more times than anybody else. In 1996, Johnson became the first man to win the 200 and 400 at the Olympics. Last summer, Greene became the first to win the 100 and 200 at the World Championships. Seconds out. Stopwatches at the ready.
