Trials and tribulations of US Olympic hopefuls

Vanitta Kinard’s story is just one of triumph over adversity at the US Olympic trials, reports Simon Lewis.

VANITTA KINARD may not be the biggest name at the US Olympic track and field trials; she may not even be going to Athens, yet her story is a refreshing antidote to the hullabaloo surrounding Marion Jones.

The first four days of the trials in Sacramento, California - they resume tomorrow after a two-day break - have been dominated by the media circus surrounding Ms Jones, her partner Tim Montgomery and others either under investigation for, or charged with, doping violations. When a track meet with more than 1,000 competitors is overshadowed by the negative publicity enveloping six or seven, the others are bound to get more than a little peeved that the light is being shut out on the feelgood aspect of the event.

But there can have been no more moving a moment at these trials than when Kinard took her place alongside her fellow qualifiers from the triple jump for a media conference on Sunday night.

Tiombe Hurd was elated to have booked her ticket to Athens by setting a new American record in the triple jump at 47 feet 5 inches, 14.45 metres.

It earned Hurd, who was crying with joy, an invaluable Olympic A standard made all the more remarkable when she revealed she had been born with a degenerative eye condition that renders her unable to see the take-off board.

It then emerged that Shakeema Walker, who finished second in the triple jump final with 14.06m, had suffered a spinal stress fracture that almost finished her career in 2001.

And hot on the heels of that revelation came Kinard’s story.

“I lost my mom,” she began, “she was murdered in March. I feel like I won here; I feel like I defeated so much to get here.”

Tragedy had struck Kinard on March 14 when her stepfather fatally shot her mother and wounded her nine-year-old brother, who had pretended to be dead as the killer turned the gun on himself.

When Hurd heard this the tears began to flow once more. “Oh my God,” she said. “I had just stopped crying and now I’m crying again. We have been through the wringer, the three of us.”

Indeed they had and for Walker and Kinard the pressure continues as they have still to reach the A standard if they are to take their places on the team in Athens. After all she has been through, Kinard is hopeful.

“I’m very, very confident. I only have about seven centimetres to get it. I’ve overcome so much already.”

There are many more examples of triumph over adversity at the US Olympic trials.

There is 5,000 metres runner Marla Runyan will go to the line in Athens alongside Sonia O’Sullivan but will not be able to recognise the Irish great as she has been legally blind since the age of nine.

There is 10,000m and marathon man Dan Browne, a graduate at the US Army’s elite West Point academy, who has been running for the memory of two fallen classmates since he learned of their deaths in separate incidents in Iraq back in January.

And there is the experience of Meb Keflezighi, who escaped the hardships and horrors of Eritrea on the famine-blighted Horn of Africa to find a new life with his parents in Mammoth Lakes, California, where he trains in the mountains that remind him of home.

So the truth of these US Olympic trials runs deeper than the headlines. Because for every Marion and Monty competing here, there is a Marla and a Meb. And then there is a Vanitta Kinard.