Track & Field Team USA has been named
Four reigning Olympic Champions and eight current World Champions highlight the Team USA roster nominated to the U.S. Olympic Committee by USA Track & Field. A roster of 127 men and women stands ready to represent the U.S. in track competition on August 3 – 12 in London.
Notable for its depth across a range of events, the roster features 28 athletes – 16 men and 12 women – who already own individual World or Olympic Gold Medals. Nineteen are American Record-Holders and one is a World Record-Holder.
2008 Olympic Gold Medalists set to defend their titles are Lashawn Merritt (400m), Angelo Taylor (400m hurdles), Dawn Harper (100m hurdles) and Stephanie Brown-Trafton (discus).
Fresh off of 2011 World Championship titles, eight athletes will look to take their supremacy to the Olympic level: Jason Richardson (110m hurdles), Christian Taylor (triple jump), Jesse Williams (high jump), Trey Hardee (decathlon), Carmelita Jeter (100m), Jenny Simpson (1500m), Lashinda Demus (400m hurdles) and Brittney Reese (long jump).
Amy Acuff is the veteran of the team as she makes her fifth trip to the Olympics. This will also mark the fourth Olympic Games for Abdi Abdirahman, Bernard Lagat, Aretha Thurmond and Angelo Taylor. Both Acuff and Thurmond have been Olympians since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
No fewer than 19 athletes on the roster currently own an American Record Indoors or Outdoors, including Tyson Gay, Wallace Spearmon, Bernard Lagat, Galen Rupp, Kerron Clement, Brad Walker, Trevor Barron, Ashton Eaton, Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, Shalane Flanagan, Lolo Jones, Lashinda Demus, Jenny Simpson, Jenn Suhr, Chaunte Lowe, Jillian Camarena-Williams, Stephanie Brown-Trafton and Kara Patterson.
Ashton Eaton owns the World Record Indoors in the heptathlon and set the Outdoor Decathlon World Record in spectacular fashion at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon.
Our Time Press Columnist Diane Dixon is an Olympic Gold & Silver Medalist in the 4×400 Meter Relay. A native New Yorker, she resides in Brooklyn with her 16 year old son Dior Christian. She was the first American woman to win a World Indoor Title in 1991 where she set the American Record in the 400 Meters in a time of 50.64. In 1988, she was part of the 4×400 Meter Relay in Seoul Korea that set (and still stands) the American Record in a time of 3.15.51. The team included the late Flo-Jo, Denean Howard and Valerie Brisco. She is the only male or female in any event to win ten (10) consecutive Indoor National Titles in the 400 Meters.