Startlists Up for Olympic Track's Opening Day

After dreaming about the Olympics for much of their lives, Roman Cress, Kara Goucher, Shani Marks, and Rasa Troup can now see the very real competition they'll face when track and field competition opens at the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Startlists have been posted on the IAAF web-site for Friday's opening day events. All three athletes will contest their events on Friday morning, Minnesota time.

Cress, a University of St. Thomas alum, will open competition for Minnesota-affiliated athletes when the gun fires for heat 3 (of 9) in the men's 100 meter prelims. Cress, who will represent the Marshall Islands, will enter the blocks for his prelim between 2003 100m World Champion Kim Collins of St. Kitts and Nevis and former World Record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica. The slowest qualifier in his prelim, Cress needs to finish in the top-3 in his heat or run one of the 10-fastest non-automatic qualifying times to advance to the event's quarterfinal round.

Heat sheets for the event are HERE.

Troup, the University of Minnesota graduate who will represent her native Lithuania at the Games, competes in Heat 3 of the 3000 meter steeplechase preliminaries. Troup is seeded #45 in the 51-runner field. To qualify for finals, she'll need to finish in the top-4 in her heat or run one of the three fastest non-top-4 times from the event's three heats.

The steeplechase heat sheets can be found HERE.

Marks, who hopes to be the first American woman to qualify for an Olympic final in the triple jump, is seeded #17 in the event. She jumps in the second of two flights. A mark of 47-5, which would match the American Record in the event, will automatically qualify the Olympic Trials champion to finals. Marks' PR is 47-2 1/4. At least twelve athletes will qualify for finals.

The triple jump flights can be found HERE.

Goucher, the bronze medalist in the event at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan last summer, returns to the 10,000 meters as the #19 seed in the 32-runner event. Osaka gold-medalist Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia and runner-up Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey return for the Olympics, as do Joanne Pavey of Great Britain and Kim Smith of New Zealand, the two runners Goucher out-raced for her medal.

The startlist for the event can be found HERE.


Down the Backstretch will publish results of Friday's events as soon as they are posted and will follow-up with details, quotes, and photos as they become available. Join us throughout Olympic track and field competition for the latest on Minnesota's Olympians.