Young track stars boost U.S. medal count

By David Woods

The Indianapolis Star

ATHENS, Greece - The kids saved the day, as they have been doing throughout the Olympic Games.

While world champions fell and world leaders failed, young athletes allowed the United States to achieve its highest medal count in track and field since 1992.

Who would have believed the only man to win two gold medals at Olympic Stadium besides Hicham El Guerrouj would be a quarter-miler who finished third last year in the Big 12?

That quarter-miler is Jeremy Wariner, 20. He was hurt last year. He is emblematic of a fresh breeze renewing a U.S. program that was hurting from a yearlong doping scandal.

Otis Harris, Derrick Brew and two Baylor teammates, Wariner and Darold Williamson, closed Saturday night by winning the 4x400-meter relay. Their time, 2:55.91, was 0.17 off the Olympic record set in 1992 and achieved a sixth successive U.S. gold in the event.

``I don't think age has anything to do with it,'' said Williamson, 21. ``I think everyone who works hard will do well. The young athletes, we expected to have the meet that we did.''

The U.S. women, featuring three collegians, also won gold in the 4x400 relay. Dee Dee Trotter said she started fast so the team could ``get away from all the mystery and drama'' of the 400 relay.

After the women failed to finish Friday's 4x100 relay because of a botched second exchange, the men nearly met the same fate. Coby Miller slowed down to accept the baton from Justin Gatlin, and Maurice Greene's charge to the finish left the Americans with the silver one-hundredth of a second behind Great Britain (38.07 to 38.08).

The outcome prevented what would have been a first for Britain - no men's medals in Olympic track. The relay debacle was not a first for the United States.

``I'm just happy that we were able to finish the race,'' Greene said.

Greene conceded the men had not practiced together other than one day before an Aug. 7 meet at Munich, Germany. He said they couldn't do so in Athens because they were all running races.

The unraveling began when Shawn Crawford ran in Friday's heats. John Capel was supposed to do so but was pulled out after testing positive for marijuana.

It was particularly galling to lose the relay after Gatlin, Greene and Crawford took three of the top four spots in the 100.

``I couldn't hear Gatlin say 'stick' because of the noise of the crowd,'' Miller explained. ``I had to slow because I knew if I was out of the zone we wouldn't have gotten a medal at all.''

The Americans finished with 24 medals, or the most since the 30 at Barcelona in 1992. The total easily could have been higher, considering the seven fourth-place finishes.

The medal haul in the men's sprints - eight of nine - was the greatest since 1904.

U.S. calamities included the failure of pole vaulter Stacy Dragila and top-ranked triple jumper Melvin Lister to make finals, and the demise of world champions Allen Johnson in the hurdles and Tom Pappas in the decathlon.

Compensating for that were breakthrough silver medals by Lauryn Williams, 20, in the 100; Allyson Felix, 18, in the 200; Harris, 22, in the 400; John Moffitt, 23, in the long jump; and Bryan Clay, 24 in the decathlon.

Gatlin, 22, won medals of all colors - gold in the 100, silver in the relay, bronze in the 200.

``You never know if they're going to perform well or let the pressure get to them or they're going to come to their first Olympics and make mistakes,'' said track legend Michael Johnson, an analyst for the British Broadcasting Corp. ``I would say the majority, they came here and performed very well.''

Wariner said he hasn't been nervous since the NCAA Championships, where he and Williamson ran the third and fourth relay legs for Baylor, as they did here. Wariner won the Olympic 400 in 44.00.

Even those who didn't perform well, such as 21-year-old Alan Webb in the 1,500, could get other chances.

The biggest shortcoming of the U.S. men was their inability to post a top-eight finish in any race longer than 400 meters. They have a chance to rectify that in Sunday night's marathon.