Aug 22, 2008

Medal hopeful trained on Peninsula

By Fred Baer / Daily News Correspondent

BEIJING - Shannon Rowbury is an Olympic finalist. Now America's No. 4 all-time metric miler, the former Central Coast Section star would like to finally bring the area a women's track medal. The color isn't that important.

The 2002 Sacred Heart Cathedral (San Francisco) grad had the fourth-fastest time in Thursday night's 1,500-meter semifinals (4 minutes, 3.89 seconds) to make the field of 12 for Saturday night's title race at Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium. She was also fourth in her heat, won by Nancy Langat of Kenya in 4:03.02. Rowbury's time would have easily won the two earlier semis.

"Ideally you want to try to be an auto-qualifier, but I knew this heat was fast," she said.

The top three finishers from each semi advanced automatically, along with the next three best times overall.

The top five times all came from Rowbury's third heat.

"It's always interesting with the rounds," she said. "You want to run hard, but you hope that you have something left for Saturday. I got a little tired at the end, but there were good things to learn before Saturday.

"This is an amazing field of women. I'm very excited to have another chance, I'm just going to put myself in the race and run smart."

After receiving her master's degree from Duke in Humanities, Rowbury returned to her San Francisco family home in the Sunset District this year, training on tracks at City College of San Francisco and on the Peninsula.

The 23-year-old, who came into the year with a best of 4:12.31 from 2006, had her major 1,500-meter breakthrough at Stanford on May 4, running an early season world-leading 4:07.59. Rowbury took the world lead again in mid-May at the Home Depot Center in Carson, running 4:01.61 and went on to win the U.S. Olympic Trials at Eugene, Ore., in July.

She lowered her best again, to 4:00.33, in Paris on July 18 (finishing second to Olympic favorite Maryam Jamal of Burundi). That time now ranks No. 4 on this year's world list and is the fastest by an American since 2002.

Only two Americans have run under four minutes. Mary Decker Slaney holds the quarter-century-old U.S. record of 3:57.12.

As a junior at Sacred Heart Cathedral in 2001, Rowbury was undefeated in the 800 meters, winning the Arcadia Invitational, the CIF state meet and the national outdoor championship. She moved up to the 1,600 meters as a senior and took the CIF title at that distance.

Her background was in ballet and then Irish step dancing before she came under the tutelage of SHC track coach Andy Chan as a freshmen cross country runner who just wanted some conditioning for soccer season. But she won a league title and led SHC to its first state cross country appearance.

At Duke, Rowbury placed second in the NCAA indoor mile in 2005 and then won the title in 2007 before being sidelined for the rest of the season with a hip stress fracture. She came back this year to win the USA indoor 3,000-meter title in February.