Even in the photo-finish picture, which is stretched and tweaked to make sure the winner is clear, it looks like Duck freshman Eric Mitchum beat Arkansas’ Eddie Jackson to the finish line in their 110 hurdles heat at last weekend’s Texas Relays.
But Mitchum lost to Jackson, the official separation time only .01 second.
No matter for Mitchum. He advanced to Saturday’s final, which he ran in 13.98 seconds, just the second sub 14-second 110 hurdles race for Oregon since 1991.
“It was the best meet I’ve ever been to,” Mitchum said of the Texas Relays. “Just the crowds, the competition, the whole environment.”
While Mitchum is excited to be running well in his first collegiate season, the Ducks are excited to have a short-distance hurdling talent to immediately replace Micah Harris, who graduated last year as the best 110-meter hurdler in Oregon history.
In only two meets this year, Mitchum has proved that he is a viable replacement for Harris. He ran an NCAA-regional-qualifying 14.07 in the Oregon Preview two weeks ago, and followed that up with his stellar performance in Texas.
“I’m excited because not too many freshmen hit sub-14 in their first year,” Mitchum said. “I’m just excited to be one of the top freshmen in the nation right now.”
Mitchum said the older hurdlers on the team, especially 400-meter hurdles star Brandon Holliday, have been supportive.
“I run the 400 hurdles too, so I push him and he pushes me, just some friendly competition,” Mitchum said.
But the hurdling star of tomorrow still wants to win today.
“I want to go to NCAAs; I want to win Pac-10s as a team,” Mitchum said. “I would like to hit about 13.80, 13.70 possibly by the time it’s all over with. 13.80 is pretty realistic, 70, that’d be pushing it. But you’ve got to set your goals high to accomplish them.”
Like most wide-eyed freshmen, Mitchum has lofty goals and big dreams. But the difference is, Mitchum just might have the talent to accomplish them.

Ducks dot

early rankings
The first ballots are in, and Oregon is on the cusp of being one of the 10 best track programs in
the nation.
In the first rankings of the season, released Tuesday by Trackwire.com, the men are ranked 11th in the nation, scoring 23 points in the site’s mock national championship meet. The women sit tied for 16th in their version of the national rankings.
As usual, the Pac-10 shows up often in the rankings. On the men’s side, USC is ranked No. 5 and Stanford — which edged Oregon for the Pac-10 title last season — sits right behind the Ducks in 12th. On the women’s side, USC is No. 4, UCLA is No. 7, Stanford is 14th and Arizona is 23rd.
The Minnesota men’s team, one of Oregon’s three opponents in the Pepsi Team Invitational on Saturday, are ranked No. 15 in the poll. Colorado and Washington, Oregon’s other opponents, aren’t ranked.

Power barred
We here at the Emerald hesitate to use the words “track” and “nerd” in the same sentence for fear of being redundant, but the track nerds at www.team-power.org have disappointed us this week, so we’ll use the words freely.
The Web site is the only one which allows the user to pit two teams against each other in head-to-head competition to see who will win. But this early in the season, very few teams have full scores in, so for this weekend we could only pit Washington against… Washington. We won’t do this. But watch this space later in the season for constant team-power.org updates.