EUGENE, Oregon: Reigning world high jump champion Jesse Williams barely qualified for London while Alysia Montano served notice she will be an 800-meter medal threat at the US Olympic Track and Field Trials.
On a rainy Monday at the meet where the top three finishers typically book US berths at the Olympics, Williams slipped in with a fourth-place finish only because third-place finisher Nick Ross had not reached the Olympic A standard.
“For me not to be on the team would be a disaster,” Williams said. “It almost didn’t happen for me.”
Ross took three leaps at 2.31 meters, the height he needed to clear to qualify for the Olympics, but failed each time as Williams watched helplessly, unable to do more than hope his rival missed.
“I’ve never been in a situation quite that dramatic, wishing someone to miss,” Williams said. “He had some really good jumps at 2.31. I was sitting there thinking, ‘Miss them.’ Normally I don’t think that during competitions.
“Normally I don’t put myself in that kind of distress.”
Montano, who missed the podium at last year’s worlds by .06 of a second, won the women’s 800 in 1:59.08. Her season-best time of 1:57.37 at a Diamond League meet in Eugene on June 1 ranks second in the world this year in the event.
“I don’t want to go to the Games for the Olympic experience,” Montano said. “I want a spot on the podium. I want to win.”
No American woman has taken a women’s 800 Olympic medal since Kim Gallagher in 1988. The only US woman to win gold in the event was Madeline Manning in 1968. But Montano intends to change that.
“I want to be a trailblazer,” she said. “I looked at the women who won this race. I would see them start running from the gun. That’s what I want to do.”
Jamie Nieto, 12th on this year’s world performers list at 2.31, won the high jump on fewest misses with Erik Kynard, fourth on the 2012 world performers list at 2.34, taking second the same way.
Both Ross and Williams missed three times before missing all their jumps at 2.31, but because Williams missed later in the competition, he finished fourth behind Ross.
“Sometimes in the rain something can go a little off,” Williams said. “I wasn’t able to get in the right position for my takeoff. I did a lot of things wrong. When I do these things well, I’ll perform well.
“When you start forcing things, when you try to muscle over, things go wrong. I became a jumper, not a high jumper.”
Williams wants to learn a lesson from his near-miss experience as he prepares for London — “to do everything in my training more correctly. I’m not going to let it happen again.
“All I care about is I’m going to London. Fourth place is not the best way to do it. There are rules set. I advanced. I’m getting to go. That has been my goal since worlds. I’m going to do everything I can to get on that podium.”
In the pole vault, 2007 world champion Brad Walker and 39-year-old defending US champion Derek Miles, who was fourth at the Beijing Olympics, were among 11 advancing to Thursday’s final.
Amanda Smock won her second US women’s triple jump crown in a row and became the only Olympic qualifier because she was the only competitor to have reached the Olympic standard.
Delilah DiCrescenzo, from whom the 2006 hit song “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s was written, was ninth-fastest among 14 qualifiers for Friday’s women’s 3,000m steeplechase final.