Athletes Compete for Olympic Spots

Two of Harvard's most decorated athletes finished better than expected but still fell well short of earning a trip to the Olympic games at the track and field Olympic trials in Sacramento last weekend.

Brenda Taylor '01 and Chris Clever '01 didn't earn one of the prized three tickets to Sydney, although both placed above the finishes their pre-trial performance lists had predicted.

Clever placed 25th out of 37 competitors in the men's javelin preliminaries on Monday. With only the top 12 athletes making it to the finals, Clever's throw of 65.76 meters fell short of the 69.12-meter cutoff.

Clever is the two-time defending javelin champion at the Heptagonals, the Crimson's championship meet. He qualified for the Olympic trials in the 1999 Heps with a school record throw of 69.64 meters. His current personal record of 69.98 meters was the 33rd-best throw in the country this year going into the trials.

In the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, Taylor had no difficulty stepping up her performance to a higher level. Her time of 56.64 seconds in Saturday night's preliminaries was 0.61 faster than her previous personal best.

Despite the top-notch effort, Taylor was only fourth out of the six athletes in her heat. After running in the first heat, Taylor had to wait to see if she would move on, as only the top two in each heat and the next six fastest times earned berths in the semifinals. When all five heats were finished, her time turned out to be the eleventh-fastest overall, securing her a spot in the next day's semifinals.

In her Sunday afternoon semifinal run, which was televised nationally on NBC, Taylor needed to place in the top four out of eight to move on to the final. Taylor had to improve her previous time by an entire second to advance.

Coming into the final straightaway of the heat, the top four hurdlers managed to pull away from the rest of the pack, leaving Taylor out of the running. After the final hurdle, Taylor managed to outrun two of the other hurdlers lagging behind. That final effort earned her sixth place in the heat, with a time of 57.85 seconds.

The semifinal run concluded a remarking season for Taylor. In the indoor season, she captained Harvard to its first Indoor Heps title since 1990, while winning three individual titles. In the outdoor season, she won two individual Outdoor Heps titles, an individual ECAC title, and earned All-American status with a seventh-place finish at NCAAs. Over the course of the year, Taylor broke over half a dozen school records.

Two of the fallen school records, the 100-meter run and the 4x100-meter relay, had belonged in part to another Trial competitor, Meredith Rainey-Valmon '90. An Atlanta Olympian in 1996, Rainey-Valmon will be attempting to make the team in the 800-meter run this weekend. She still holds the school records in the 200, the 400 and the 800.

International Competition

The Harvard track and field contingent in Sydney will also include some international members of the team.

Darren Dinneen '00, who earned All-American status with an eighth-place finish in the 800-meter run at NCAAs this year, will be attempting to make Ireland's Olympic Team. The Irish Olympic Trials will take place on August 19th.

High jumper Dora Gyorffy '01 has already earned an Olympic berth on the Hungarian national team. A surprise result from the U.S. Olympic Trials meant that Gyorffy will be up against some familiar competition in Sydney. Texas's Erin Aldrich--the only athlete to beat Gyorffy at NCAA Outdoors this past season--managed to twice avert disaster this weekend and sneak onto the U.S. Olympic Team.

In the preliminaries, Aldrich twice missed the qualifying bar of 1.80 meters. On her final try, she grazed the bar with her heel, but the jump--good by the slimmest of margins--moved Aldrich into the final.

The next day, four competitors cleared the 1.90-meter bar on their first try, while Aldrich struggled again, missing twice. But she once again converted her third try under extreme pressure. Aldrich then moved into second-place by clearing a height of 1.93 meters.

With the two favorites Tisha Waller and Amy Acuff failing to clear the 1.93-meter bar, Aldrich was guaranteed a spot in Sydney. Acuff won a jump-off to knock the heralded Waller out of Olympic contention. The women's high jump will be one of the last events contested at Sydney. The next Gyorffy vs. Aldrich matchup will not take place until the high jump preliminaries on September 28th, the last Thursday of the Olympics. The top twelve finishers in the preliminaries will compete again two days later to determine the medal winners.