Amber Campbell@@http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/trackandfield/story/_/id/8082269/amber-campbell-amanda-bingson-jessica-cosby-make-us-olympic-team@@ won the first event of the 2012 Olympic Trials, taking first in the women’s hammer throw with a meet-record mark of 71.80 meters. Joining Campbell in London will be Amanda Bingson who just graduate from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and American record holder Jessica Cosby,@@checked@@ who earned their invitations to the Olympics with throws of 71.78 and 70.77 meters, respectively.
Campbell and Cosby both entered the afternoon having met the Olympic-A standard of 71.50 earlier in the year, but Bingson needed a personal best to qualify. She improved on her first four throws before fouling on her fifth and just missing a first-place mark on her sixth and final throw. But her toss of 71.78 was good enough to move into first place at the time, and it eventually punched her ticket to London.
“I knew that I had to hit that 71.50 if I wanted to go anywhere,” Bingson said.
It will be the second Olympic Games for Nike athletes Campbell and Cosby; but Bingson is a first-time Olympian.  For the returners, it’s a chance to make the Games feel less like a defining experience and more like a routine competition.
“I definitely feel more prepared,” Cambpell said. “Having done two World Championships between the Olympics, you really get a feel for how things go at a major championship.”
For Bingson — just a few weeks removed from her college graduation — this is all very new.
“I’ve only been doing this for just over three years,” she said. “To come out at the Olympic Trials, throw the A-standard and now be an Olympian” — her eyes glowed — “is just an amazing feeling, and I have nothing else to compare it to.”
She said her coaches had been planning on using this year as a building block to the 2016 Olympics but instead focused most of their energy on the collegiate season, in which she placed third at the NCAA Championships with a throw several meters shorter than her qualifying mark on Thursday.
The previous meet record for the Olympic Trials — a mark 0f 70.72 posted by Cosby at the 2008 Trials — was twice broken in the qualifying round, first by Cosby (70.77 meters) and then later by Bingson (71.22). Both throwers posted their best distance on their third and final qualifying throw. Campbell and Brittany Riley each threw better than 69 meters to place third and fourth respectively, with the fifth through ninth qualifying spots separated by just 1.22 meters.