Aug 24, 2008

NorCal athletes manage top 10 showings in Beijing

By Fred Baer / Daily News Correspondent

BEIJING - Three Northern California athletes produced top 10 placements in the final individual track and field events of the Olympics. The USA also won the two concluding 4x400-meter relays.

Stanford grad Ryan Hall was 10th in the marathon, Shannon Rowbury from San Francisco had America's highest0ever women's 1,500-meter finish (seventh) and women's high jumper Chaunte Howard out of Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo) placed sixth.

Hall kept moving up in Sunday morning's climatic marathon, finishing just behind ninth-place American teammate Dathan Ritzenhein. It was the first time since 1976 that two Americans placed in the top 10 at the Olympics. At Montreal, Frank Shorter finished second and Stanford's Don Kardong was fourth.

Twenty-one-year-old Samuel Wansiru of Kenya broke from a lead trio at the 35-kilometer point (21 1/2 miles) and won in an Olympic-record 2 hours, 6 minutes, 32 seconds. That took nearly three seconds off the mark of 2:09.21 set in 1984 by Carlos Lopes of Portugal.

Hall's time of 2:12:33 was off his best of 2:06:17, run under cooler conditions at the London Marathon in April. Wansiru also recorded his PR in that race, finishing second in 2:05:24.

Yonas Kifle of Erithrea, led Wansiru at the halfway mark in 1:02.34 but couldn't maintain that pace and fell to 26th by the end. At halfway, Ritzenheim was 12th in 1:03:54 and Hall 17th in 1:04:27. They had stayed with the lead pack through the first 5K before dropping back.

"They went out really fast," Hall said. "I thought it was way too hard, at least for me. I would have died if I went out that fast."

As temperatures warmed to 86 degrees at the end, the American duo picked off many of the early speedsters but couldn't catch them all.

"It's all about finishing as high as I can," Hall said. "I did the best I could. I ran my heart out. It wasn't quite as good as I had hoped for. You have to give credit to those guys at the front."

In her first Games, Sacred Heart Cathedral grad Rowbury gave America its best 1,500-meter finish. The former Central Coast Section prep star placed seventh in 4 minutes, 3.58 seconds. Three Americans had previously finished eighth: Ruth Wysocki in 1984, Mary Decker Slaney in 1988, and Marla Runyan in 2000.

Rowbury stayed with the lead pack, which went through 400 meters in 65.90 and 800 in 2:13.70. She was fourth when world champion Maryam Jamal of Bahrain broke with 500 meters to go. Jamal led at 1,200 in 3:16.41, but Nancy Jebet Langat of Kenya passed her over the final furlong to win in 4:00.23.

Rowbury was not pleased with her inability to chase the leaders on the last lap, however.

"It's hard to explain, but sometimes, when you want to go, it's just not there," she said. "I tried to stay with them as much as I could. ... I didn't have my legs today."

Howard, a 24-year-old mother competing in her second Olympics, cleared 6 feet, 6 1/4 inches on her third attempt to clinch the top-six finish in the high jump. Tia Hellebaut of Belgium went over 6-8 3/4 on her first attempt to win gold over heavy favorite Blanka Vlasic of Croatia, who cleared on her second try.

The USA won the concluding men's and women's 4x400-meter relays Saturday night to finish with a pacesetting seven gold medals and 23 track and field medals. Jamaica and Russia each won six golds. The five men's golds was the fewest ever by an American Olympic team. But medals now are spread among more countries than in the past. There were 204 countries competing here.

The three golds by the USA women is the most since they achieved the same total at Atlanta in 1996. American women had nine total medals, their third highest Olympic total.