| The Olympic Trials, sad for many, joyous for a few |
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| Written by Joffroi Holcombe | |
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This past weekend was the Olympic Trials in the marathon. This is a running event that America is becoming more and more serious about and it is evident after you see the results. This year the trial’s course looped around the famous Central Park in New York. Becoming able to run in this race is not at all “a walk in the park” but instead you have to be able to run 26.2 miles in a blistering 2 hours and 20 minutes to ensure you have a spot. For those of us that can’t do the math in our heads, that’s running 26.2 miles at 5:20 pace per mile. Ouch. Well, some of you might think its impossible, but there were 104 athletes that completed the Olympic Trials. Most of these athletes are normal people, too; most are in the upper twenties working at full-time jobs, raising families, and just doing running as their hobby. Many of them are not even sponsored by any name brand companies. Everyone out there today had the same goal in their head, to finish top three and represent the United States at Beijing. One individual not only had that in his thoughts, but he wanted to dominate the field and make a statement. Ryan Hall put one of the most impressive performances in American marathon history. He led the first half of the marathon in 1:06, and then destroyed the second half in a 1:02, finishing with a 2:09:04. Almost every singled 5k split he ran was faster then the previous. The second place finisher was the long time legend Dathan Ritzenhein with a 2:11:40. Dathan has been in the spot light ever since he was the only two-time individual high school national champion in cross country. The last to qualify to compete in the Olympics was Brian Sell with a 2:11:40. Unfortunately, most of the celebration was masked by a mysterious and tragic event. Ryan Shay, an elite marathoner of Flagstaff, Arizona, collapsed at the 5 1⁄2 mile mark and was pronounced dead shortly after. Shay used to be one of the nation’s top runners for Notre Dame, receiving All American status nine times. An autopsy was performed the following day, which was inconclusive. Training was going very well for the athlete and so this is all a mystery. At the age of 14, Shay was diagnosed with a larger then normal heart, but it never showed any sign of affecting his athletics or lifestyle. Before the race he told his very close training partner Abdi Abdirahman, “Just run your race. If everything goes well, [...], you should be back in Beijing. Just believe in yourself.” This tragedy has been the news all over the running community. Many people are in grief over this athlete’s undetermined death. Dathan Ritzenhein said, “It’s not rational for a 28-year-old person to die.” Hopefully this will just be another reason to encourage the 3 Americans going to the Olympics to run the best they can, not only for this country, but for Ryan Shay. |
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