The 5,124 fans who showed up for the Oregon Twilight on Friday night came expecting to see a track meet. They weren’t expecting a visit from presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Neither was Virginia Tech’s Tasmin Fanning. Minutes after she won the 5,000 meters in a school-record time of 15 minutes, 47.90 seconds, Obama came onto the track escorted by Oregon head coach Vin Lananna. Fanning, who had just left the track after her victory lap, came sprinting back on to find and talk to Obama.
“He asked me a few questions about the race and I just gave my answers,” she said. “I don’t even know what I said, I’m just so excited to meet him. It’s a culmination of fun and excitement.”
Obama, known for his basketball-playing ability, apparently has a basic knowledge of track, too.
“He asked what race I had run and how I did with that, so I would say that he understands it enough,” Fanning said.
In her final tune-up before next weekend’s Pacific-10 Conference Championships, Nicole Blood made a statement in the 1,500m. She finished third behind Nike’s Lauren Fleshman, dropping almost four seconds off her previous best.
Blood’s time of 4:14.73 is the fastest in the Pac-10 this year and fourth-fastest all-time at Oregon.
“I went out there and stuck right on the front girls and wasn’t sure how good that was gonna feel, but me and Coach talked about the race and the goal was really to just go out and give it a shot,” she said. “Usually you try to sit back and run a little bit slower the first half, but I don’t really know what I’m capable of in the 1,500 and the only way to find out is to go out hard and see how much you can hang on.”
Zoe Buckman improved her season-best slightly in the 800m to 2:06.76, in a race paced through just more than 400 meters by Rebekah Noble. Noble, who has been injured since last summer, said she’s still not very close to returning to racing.
“After 400, 410 meters, I started to be like, ‘oh, man,’ the lactic acid, getting really tired, so I stepped off a little early,” she said. “I don’t know what we do after this, so who knows, maybe the Olympic Trials is the next race.”
Theisen, McFadden give Ducks second-place start
Freshman Brianne Theisen finished second to six-time NCAA champion Jacquelyn Johnson of Arizona State in the Pac-10 heptathlon championships and Kalindra McFadden placed eighth, giving the Ducks nine points heading into the rest of the meet next weekend.
Theisen’s 5,765 points are a 190-point personal best and stand as the second-best mark in the country this year.
Johnson set the Pac-10 record with 6,307 points.
McFadden’s score of 5,022 was more than 400 points off her personal best, but managed to finish eighth on the strength of a fifth-place finish in the 800m.
Oregon’s Erin Funkhouser finished 12th with a personal-best 4,720 points.
Arizona State leads the team battle with 10 points, followed by the Ducks and Stanford with nine each.
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