Flashes of Panic

I’m a little amazed at how much head-space I find I have devoted to guessing who’s going to be on the U.S. Olympic team in the nine as-yet unselected distance and middle-distance events this summer. (The marathons are picked, though there’s a possibility of ferment between the men’s marathon and the 10,000m. Still no women’s steeplechase: boo, IAAF.)

Unlike 2000, I’m not even going to the Trials due to a lack of vacation time. Yet I find that I am already committing to memory the Olympic qualifying standards, who’s got ‘em, who might get ‘em before the Trials, who might get ‘em at the Trials if the race is fast enough.

The silly part is that, at some level, the excitement is that we can’t predict it. We put a bunch of our best athletes on the track and see who can produce in a high-pressure situation. We trickle that data through a complicated set of rules, and sometimes a surprise comes up. Who would have picked a Stanford junior with a freaky chopped stride and hippy stream-of-consciousness interview style (won’t slow down, won’t shut up) to win the 1500m and a ride to Sydney in 2000?

Part of it is a sort of attention triage, weeding out the people who are remarkable for qualified reasons (for instance, “Really good… for a high schooler”) from those who are simply fast. Part of it is being ready for the various complicated scenarios which come up when Trials results and Olympic qualifications don’t overlap. But in the end, what I’m doing is setting up expectations for the specific reason of having them overturned.

Some have argued that that’s half the fun of an Olympic year, and I’m beginning to agree with them. After all, most of these athletes will have to run the race(s) of their life (lives) to make the final in Athens.

Now playing: Subterranean from Songs From The Other Side by The Charlatans