Allyson Felix wins Olympic 200 metres for USA
Allyson Felix won the women’s 200 meters at the London Games in 21,88 seconds, adding a gold medal to her previous two Olympic silver medals and highlighting a medal haul for the United States in track and field on Wednesday night.
In four events at the Olympic Stadium, the U.S. came away with three gold medals, two silvers and two bronzes. Brittney Reese won the long jump and Aries Merritt won the 110-meter hurdles.
At the U.S. Olympic trials, Felix (26) had run 21,69, history’s fourth-fastest performance, to become the favorite in London. She finished fifth in the 100 meters on Saturday, an event she used to help her prepare for the speed and endurance required in the 200.
It paid off on Wednesday, as Felix crossed the finish line with a smile of relief on her face after settling for silver in the 200 meters in 2004 and 2008.
“I mean, finally” – she said after the race. “It’s been a long time coming. I am so overjoyed.”
Allyson Felix.
Felix won in a time of 21,88 seconds. The second time she’s gone under 22 seconds this year, the only woman in the world to do so.
She was in a tight race down the home stretch with Jamaican 100 meters gold medalist Shelly-Ann Fraser Pryce, but Felix pulled away at the very end. Fraser-Pryce took the silver in 22.09 seconds, and American Carmelita Jeter, the 100 silver medalist, won the bronze medal in 22,14.
Felix’s nemesis, Jamaican two-time defending gold medalist Veronica Campbell-Brown, was fourth.
“I’m happy for her” – Campbell-Brown said. “Allyson and I have been racing for a long time and I know how bad she wanted it.”
Felix became a sensation even while she was still running high school track, and at 18, in her first Olympics in 2004 in Athens, she took the silver medal to Campbell-Brown. She ran a time of 22,18 seconds, 0,13 slower than Campbell-Brown but a world junior record.
Four years later, now a 22-year-old woman in Beijing, Felix was again met in the final by Campbell-Brown and they were again the class of the field. Felix was second again. Though she and Campbell-Brown both broke 22 seconds, Felix’s time of 21,93 was 0,19 behind the winner.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcO5Zjlnt3g
She rolled off the turn and into the straightaway, 80 meters of orange carpet stretched out in front of her. It was just past 9 on a warm Wednesday evening in the well of London’s Olympic Stadium, four days from the close of the 30th Summer Games. Allyson Felix glided toward the lead in the 200 meters. It turns out she resents such descriptions when the work is so hard. “I’m very strong” – Felix would say later that night. But she does glide. She floats. It’s air beneath her feet, ground beneath the others. To her left, Jamaicans Veronica Campbell-Brown, who has so bedeviled Felix in the past, and London 100 gold medalist Shelly-Anne Fraser-Pryce, seemed to trail her by a small margin. Perhaps teammate Carmelita Jeter, too, on the outside to the right. Felix drove her arms harder and pursed her lips in effort, as if to whistle.
Her life has played out in the eight lanes of a running track for more than a decade now. There was a dirt oval in southern California when she was a freshman in high school where a part-time track coach was stunned to see her run so gracefully in clunky basketball shoes. There was the ancient surface in Mexico City where she ran so fast in the 200 as a 17-year-old that the entire sprint world took notice. There were stadiums in Finland, Japan and Germany where she won world championship gold medals; and others in Greece and China, where she took Olympic silvers.
Her career has spanned multiple generations of American track athletes. When Felix first pulled a Team USA uniform over her head for the world championship in the summer of 2003, Marion Jones and Maurice Greene were the two biggest American names in the sport; both have been gone for years – Jones disgraced, Greene respected. Her current Olympic teammate, 21-year-old long jump bronze medalist and potential triple jump medalist Will Claye, was 12 years old. BALCO was a business, not a scandal that would rock multiple sports, including hers. One of her best friends was 2004 Olympic gold medalist Justin Gatlin, and he did four years for doping. She is an elder stateswoman at the age of 26, with both a child’s smile and cold worldliness. It is not wrong to say that she has seen it all.
But on this night, she saw only a finish line in the distance, and perhaps London’s undersized Olympic cauldron beyond, and she drove forward. It is difficult to know precisely when Felix put away the Jamaicans and Jeter, perhaps 60 meters from the finish, or even less. Don’t ask her.
“I don’t even know what happened” – she said after the race. “I have to go back and watch the race.”