For once in the heptathlon, the focus wasn’t on Hyleas Fountain during the 800m.
Fountain had long since sealed up her victory, which would eventually total 6,667 points, the third-best performer in event history.
Jacquelyn Johnson had also secured her second-place finish, making her first Olympic team with a personal best score of 6,347.
Instead, the final event became a showdown between Diana Pickler in third place and Virginia Johnson in fourth, separated by 20 points before the race. To beat Pickler and take over the coveted third-place spot, Johnson needed to beat her by at least 1.5 seconds.
In the end, Johnson won her heat in 2:15.88, but missed her spot to Beijing by an excruciating 0.7 seconds.
“I just attempted to go with her every time she moved,” a relieved Pickler said later. “I haven’t been known in the past to race to beat out a person in the 800. If I didn’t do it here I don’t know where else there would be to do it.”
Pickler finished with 6,257 points, 10 more than Johnson.
Fountain’s last-place finish in the 800m was about the only thing she didn’t excel at during the two-day competition. She set personal bests in five of the first six events en route to the world’s best score this year, a personal best by 165 points. It is Fountain’s third U.S. title.
Her key was staying healthy.
“That’s, of course, half the battle,” she said.
For the second day in a row, the 27-year-old Georgia alumna blew out the field in the first event, leaping 22-7, a personal best by almost nine inches. She followed that with a win in the javelin, though her score of 824 points was off the 1,000-point pace she had been averaging for each event.
Jacquelyn Johnson stayed close, jumping 21-2 and throwing the javelin 1 foot, 6 inches away from Fountain’s mark.
Dan O’Brien, Johnson’s coach, was very happy with the four-time NCAA heptathlon champion’s performance, but said Fountain was just too much.
“I was calling (Johnson) the next JJK (Jackie Joyner-Kersee),” he said, “but she’s going to have to deal with Hyleas Fountain for the next couple of years.”
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