The Hayward Field sidelines are starting to resemble a very talented emergency room.
Oregon defending national decathlon champion Santiago Lorenzo has decided to redshirt the 2002 season after a quadricep injury kept him from training for much of this year, Lorenzo said Tuesday. The decision came two weeks after defending national javelin champion John Stiegeler announced he would sit out the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
“It wouldn’t be a smart idea (to keep competing) because it’s the type of injury you don’t want to be chronic,” Lorenzo said. “Plus I never redshirted, I have one more year of school anyway, so I can come back next year. It’s not the best decision, but with the limited choices that we have it’s the smartest.”
Lorenzo has not competed yet this season, so he is eligible to redshirt. He will likely return next season with Stiegeler, if Stiegeler can successfully petition for a medical redshirt.
“John’s injury helped to make the decision, not for me but for the whole coaching staff,” Lorenzo said. “When you have two national champions injured for the season, it’s much easier to make the choice than just having one. It wasn’t the determining factor, but it did influence the decision.”
Lorenzo, who is currently going through rehabilitation, said he’s going to spend as much time at the track as possible.
“Oh, I’m going to be the No. 1 cheerleader,” Lorenzo said with a smile Tuesday.
Lorenzo, who won the decathlon at the NCAA Championships last season in front of his home crowd, injured his quadricep in February and said he reinjured it slightly several weeks later, which led to his decision to redshirt the season.

Fun with computers
A national Web site, www.team-power.org, lets users pit teams against each other in head-to-head action. The Ducks are seventh on the site’s national rankings, which are formulated by taking each individual’s best mark and assigning points on a decathlon-like scale.
Want to know who would win a clash between Oregon and UCLA? The Bruins would win a squeaker, 105-96. But Oregon would take out Stanford with a landslide 140-0 victory. In fact, according to the site, Oregon could beat any other team in the Pacific-10 Conference in a
dual-meet setting except Arizona State.
Want to know how accurate the site is? When Oregon and Washington met on April 13, the Ducks blew out the Huskies 117-81. The brains at www.team-power.org have Oregon winning 113-88.

Updating the list
With the relative complacency of the Oregon squad last weekend — the Ducks sent only a handful of athletes to the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in California — some of Oregon’s athletes moved around the national lists without even competing.
Simon Kimata, who had held the national lead in the 800-meter race until recently, saw that lead fall to Otukile Lekote of South Carolina. Jason Hartmann moved to eighth on the national list in the 5,000, and Adam Kriz moved to 13th in the hammer.
Micah Harris jumped into the national rankings with a school-record in the 110 hurdles Sunday. Harris now ranks seventh nationally in the event. Billy Pappas also jumped into the national decathlon rankings — at No. 12 — after his first decathlon of the season.
But some athletes stayed put. Trevor Woods’ 18-foot jump was fourth-best in the nation when it happened, and it still is. Stiegeler still leads the nation in the javelin, even though he won’t throw again this season.