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News08 Jul 2004


US Olympic Trials – A national institution

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Maurice Greene running in the 200m at the US nationals (© Getty Images)

There is no trackandfield fixture in the US so eagerly anticipated by athletes and spectators alike than the quadrennial Olympic Trials, a spectacle staged for the purpose of selecting that nation’s team for the Olympic Games.  

Returning to the same Sacramento site which witnessed the 2000 Trials, the Athens selections will unfold starting on Friday for the 22nd time in an eight-day competition stretching over two weekends and concluding on 18 July, barely a month before Athletics competition in Athens begins. 

Dating back to 1908, the Olympic Trials are an American institution which has been employed and accepted as the turnstile through which all American Olympic athletes must pass.

It’s an unforgiving format which chooses the first three to cross the line.  No exceptions.  At first glance, it seems a bit draconic. Just ask Dan O’Brien, whose pole vault failure in the 1992 Trials Decathlon kept him out of the Barcelona Games at a time when he was top-ranked in the world and barely a month away from a World record performance. 

However, the Trials method does serve to depoliticize the selections, “keeping blood off the hands of the officials” and letting the athletes have the final say.  Virtually every competitor will agree that the pressure of the Olympic Trials is every bit as great, perhaps more so, than that of the Olympic Games itself. 

FULL TRIALS PREVIEW, click here 

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