Andrew Wheating knows exactly what to do the next time he wins a big race.
“If you do something amazing like that, first of all, go find your family. Second of all, you go find your coach,” the senior from Norwich, Vt., said. “Third of all, you go find your teammates. The moment I finished, I was like: What do I do?”
That thing that Wheating did, on the night of June 30, 2008, was punch his ticket to the
Beijing Olympics in one of the most thrilling 800-meter runs in recent memory. Oregon Track Club’s Nick Symmonds would pull away from the lead pack to win the race in 1:44.10 before a Hayward Field crowd gone temporarily insane. Wheating, clad in his yellow Oregon singlet, had employed his signature kick to move from seventh place to second place. As he crossed the line after Symmonds, in 1:45.03, Wheating had his arms raised above his head, his face frozen in a Munchian scream of silence.
Right behind Wheating, of course, the third and final spot on the U.S. Olympic team was up for grabs. OTC’s Christian Smith, with Nike’s Khadevis Robinson right on his hip, dove for the finish line … and somehow beat the hard-charging Robinson, 1:45.47 to 1:45.53. Three men, all tied closely to Oregon, were going to Beijing.
Wheating, searching for the right way to celebrate his moment, followed his friend Symmonds around the track.
“Right off the turn, my parents and my brother and sister were right there, screaming at me. It didn’t register at all. I was just like…” And there’s that face again.
Wheating cannot escape that face. Fans that recognize him will make it if they cannot immediately call to mind his Olympic appearance — or his three NCAA titles (800 meters last season, two indoor distance medley relay titles). Teammate Jordan McNamara, who will compete this week at 5,000 meters, occasionally yells “Ohhh!” at Wheating during practice, a take-off from the NBC announcers’ call of the Smith-Robinson dive for the line.
This weekend, he will attempt a double at 800 meters and 1,500 meters that, if pulled off successfully, could launch him into full-blown track stardom. Not bad for a kid who’s high school, Kimball Union Academy, had no track team. Not bad for a kid who had no expectations entering the Oregon program as a gangly six-foot-five freshman.
“He runs his first race — we throw him in a B or C distance medley, and I didn’t even time him,” Oregon assistant athletic director Vin Lananna said about a race Wheating’s freshman year. “And I look, and geez, he’s closing on our best guys. Everybody’s like, ‘Who is that guy?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s Andrew Wheating.’ And they said, ‘Do you know he ran 4:05?’ I said, ‘No, he didn’t.’ They said, ‘Yeah, 4:05.’ I thought he was going to run 4:15.”
“And I suddenly became this great coach,” Lananna adds with a chuckle.
And Wheating suddenly had great expectations. Particularly this season, after notable clashes at NCAA indoors (800m) and Penn Relays (4×800-meter relay) with Virginia freshman Robby Andrews left him 0 for 2.
Nevertheless, Wheating’s attitude, lying somewhere between happy-go-lucky and willfully irreverent, usually wins out.
“He’s a free spirit,” Lananna said. “He’s re-energized my excitement about the sport of track and field.”
That attitude will serve him well in his post-collegiate runner career. Wheating is looking forward to it — to a point.
“I’ve talked to all these professional athletes. I’d say about 75 percent of the time they are like, ‘Oh, I spend about 90 percent of my day just around the house,’” he said. “That sounds so boring! And I already spend a lot of my time around my house, playing the piano, avoiding homework, so why wouldn’t I do it professionally?”
Don’t be surprised if that doesn’t line up with the potential that former Oregon runner and Sports Illustrated writer Kenny Moore wrote about for the Web site RunnersWorld.com. Moore’s 2009 profile of Wheating revealed a young man who stumbled onto high expectations in a community that demands nothing less, aiming high while keeping himself grounded as much as possible.
“Dare we add to the long list of ‘next great American milers’ Andrew Wheating?” Moore posited. “A young man who, while showing many splendid indicators — he made the U.S. Olympic team last year after less than three years of track training — is still a relative novice at the mile? Are we that desperate? Or are this kid’s credentials — his explosive backstretch kick; his confident, commanding style — just too tempting not to consider?”
For now, the temptation is great, and this week could mark the next major change — after his Olympic Trials performance — in Andrew Wheating’s life. If, perchance, Wheating should accomplish something special this week at Hayward Field, he knows what to do.
Go find your family. Go find your coach. Go find your teammates. In that order.
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Out of nowhere
Daily Emerald
June 8, 2010
Jack Hunter
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