Two months ago, Oregon’s Simon Kimata was in a boot cast.
A month ago, Kimata didn’t think he could break the two-minute barrier in the 800-meters, a time he easily surpassed in high school.
Now the Nyeri, Kenya, native is back to his old form and is ranked fourth nationally. Kimata completed a successful rehabilitation from an Achilles stress fracture last weekend at the Texas Invitational. Kimata won the 800-meters in a seasonal best time of 1 minute, 47 seconds to automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships. Kimata broke the three-year-old track record at Mike Myers Stadium.
For his efforts, Kimata earned the Pacific-10 Conference’s Athlete of the Week award. The junior college transfer owns the top mark in the conference by a half-second.
The 1:47.92 mark is the eighth fastest in school history, behind Scott Daggatt in 1974.
Kimata is the third Duck to capture the Athlete of the Week this season. He joins junior John Stiegeler, who has received the honor twice this year, and junior Santiago Lorenzo on the Pac-10 awards list.
The road to recovery has been marked by major improvements for Kimata. His first race in more than two years came at the April 4-7 Texas Relays, where Kimata ran the anchor leg on Oregon’s sprint medley relay team. Kimata surprised even himself with a 1:55 performance. At the Washington Dual meet on April 14, Kimata earned another seasonal best at 1:50, followed by a run of 1:49 to win the Oregon Invitational two weeks later.
While Kimata has a trip to the NCAA Championships all but clinched, he is still cautious towards his injury.
“I can still feel my Achilles when I really push it,” Kimata said. “Up until now, the goal has just been to win and to stay healthy. I haven’t really focused on time much. I’m very pleased though.”
Invading the record books
Some unexpected athletes have snuck into the Oregon record books this season. In addition to Micah Harris tying the school record in the 110-meter hurdles and Stiegeler being only six feet away from the javelin record, four others have made it into Oregon’s top-10 list.
Sophomore Terry Ellis is now tied-for-fifth on the 110 hurdle list with Don Wright at 14.04. Redshirt freshman Jason Hartmann needed only one race to make it onto the top-10 list in the 10,000 meters in a time of 28:56.
Sophomore Foluso Akiradewo sneaked onto the all-time triple jump list by two inches with a leap of 50 feet, six inches and freshman Adam Jenkins is 10th on the javelin list with a toss of 218-5.
Inching closer to spots in the Oregon record book are freshman Trevor Woods in the pole vault, junior John Bello in the shot put and sophomore Samie Parker in the 100-meters.
Form charts
If the NCAA Championships were held today, Oregon would score 24 points and place ninth (based off of last year’s scoring). Oregon would receive big points with Stiegeler’s win in the javelin and fourth-place finishes by Kimata in the 800 and Lorenzo in the decathlon.
Other points would come from redshirt freshman Hartmann in the 10,000 meters and junior Jason Boness in the high jump.
The Ducks have NCAA provisional qualifiers in three other events but are not expected to score. Oregon placed 44th last year at the NCAAs and 65th in 1999. The Ducks haven’t finished higher than fifth since 1992.
Oregon’s NCAA qualifiers will look forward to competing at Hayward Field for the nationals, May 30 through June 2.
