Introduction
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INTRODUCTION The U.S. Olympic Trials is the best national track meet in the world, and there is no athletics meeting quite like the Trials. The Olympic Games and World Championships may have a higher overall standard of performance, but no national track championships can compare in terms of quality. It is not merely a question of statistical performance; the qualification process for the Olympics is more intense for Americans. Other nations generally use their Trials plus the seasonal record of top athletes, but there are very few instances of the sud- den-death form of selection that the USA uses. Make the top-three in your event, and you are on the team. Have a slightly off day, and you are out. The history of the sport is strewn with the debris of world record holders who missed out on Olympic glory because they made a mistake or were ill during the Olympic Trials. For many participants making the USA team is more of a problem than winning an Olympic medal, and the result is that the Olympic Trials have an element of drama that is beyond the scope of even the Olympic Games. The structure of the U.S. Olympic Trials has changed and developed since the first meetings in 1908. Prior to that year there was no elimination process. The presence of athletes at the Olympics between 1896 and 1906 was due primarily to certain colleges and clubs, as well as individual athletes. Princeton and the Boston Athletic Association, plus an individual entry - James Connolly of Harvard, the first gold medallist of the modern Olympics - were the initial representatives of the USA in the Athens Games. In 1900, there was no official team, but eight colleges plus the New York Athletic Club sent athletes, while 1904 saw St. Louis hosting what was almost entirely an American Clubs meeting, with a smattering of individual entries in support. For 1908 and 1912, the system changed, with area trial meets, which served as a guide for selection. In 1908 these were the Western (Stanford - May 9), Central (Chicago - May 29), Collegiate (IC4A in Philadelphia - May 29-30), and finally the Eastern Trials (Philadelphia - June 6). The team was selected two days later in two tranches, being the official team whose travel costs were met by the U.S. Olympic Committee, and a supplementary list of athletes who had to cover their own expenses. In 1912, there were three Trials meetings, beginning with the Western (Stanford - May 17), and followed by the Central (Evanston - June 8) and Eastern (Cambridge - also June 8). The team was selected by the USOC and the AAU, with the winners of the Eastern Trials receiving automatic selection - reflecting the bias of AAU president James Sullivan. The three decathlon Olympic Trials for that year ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Western trial took place with one decathlete competing against specialists, and retiring after the first day’s events; the Eastern event was cancelled after only two entries were received, and the central event was scored on a point-for-place system, rather than using the new tables devised for the Stockholm Games, which would have resulted in a World Record for the winner, J.Austin Menaul. The nature of the Olympic Trials changed in 1920 out of necessity. In the 1912 Olympics, 11 Americans had competed in the 100 meters. In 1920 the number of athletes allowed from a single country in any event in the Olympics was reduced to four, which was further lessened to the present 3 in 1932. The Olympic Trials of 1920 doubled as the AAU Championships, which was also the case in 1928, 1932, 1992, 1996 and 2000. Qualification for the Olympic Trials was via “semifinal” Trials held on June 26 in Chicago, New Orleans, Pasadena and Philadelphia, while a few more athletes qualified through an Armed Services meeting in St. Louis on June 3-5. The 3000-meter stee- plechase, not regularly held outside Europe, took place on July 10 at Travers Island, N.Y., and the decathlon in New York on July 9-10. The Trials for other events were held on July 16-17 in Cambridge, Mass. Although the top-4 was the guide, the final team was selected by the USOC/AAU committee. 1924 saw a similar format, with final try-outs held on June 13-14 in Cambridge, after semifinal meetings on May 31 in Ann Arbor, Cambridge, Iowa City and Los Angeles. While the first four in each event was the general rule for selection, there were 16 choices of ath- letes outside the top-4 made by the committee. The decathlon was held two days prior to the main Olympic Trials in New York and was completed in a single day. The Olympic Trials were held in Cambridge for the third consecutive (and final) time in 1928, except for the 400, 400h and decathlon which took place in Philadelphia on July 3-5, two days prior to the main two-day meeting. With the advent of womens’ olympic track and field, a separate meeting was held in Newark, N.J. on July 4. The women’s meeting would be kept separate from the men’s until 19786. Fourteen qualifying meetings were held between May 18 and June 30, showing the expansion of track and field throughout the USA. In 1932 the AAU/OT was held in Stanford on July 15-16, and the women’s AAU took place in Evanston on the same weekend, with just two weeks break before the first day’s track and field in the Los Angeles Olympics. Although this may have seemed to be almost indecently close to the Games, previous periods of 3-4 weeks after the tryouts did include the laborious journey by ship across the atlantic. It was not until 1952 that the U.S. team was able to fly to Europe for the Olympics. There were 18 preliminary meetings in 1932, with six semifinal tryouts including the IC4A and NCAA championships, all of which helped hone down the number of entries for the OT. Only HISTORY OF THE OLYMPIC TRIALS • 4 the 110h had more than one preliminary round, as compared to all track events up to 400 in 1928. The decathlon team was selected from the AAU meet (Evanston - June 24-25), and the 50k walkers from the AAU (New York - June 5) plus the winner of a separate Olympic Trials race in Los Angeles on July 3. For the first time since 1924, the Olympic Trials were separated from the AAU Championships, with the AAU on July 3-4 in Princeton, N.J. and the OT on July 11-12 at Randall’s Island, N.Y. The qualification for the Olympic Trials had been via the NCAA Championships (Chicago - June 19-20), and Semi-final Tryouts on June 26-27 for the the East (Cambridge), Central (Milwaukee - which incorporated the AAU/FOT decathlon), and West (Los Angeles). The women’s AAU/FOT meet was in Providence, Rhode Island the same days as the men’s AAU, and the 50k walk selection race was the AAU event in Cincinnati on June 27. Attendance for the 2-day Trials meet- ing was 34,000. The post-war Olympic Trials of 1948 were less elaborate, in that the final Trials, held in Evanston on July 9-10, were preceded by just 2 semifinal meetings - the NCAA (Minnesota - June 18-19) and the AAU (Milwaukee - July 2-3, with the women’s qualifying meeting this time being a separate FOT at Brown Univeristy stadium in Providence (July 12). The top-6 finishers at the NCAA/AAU made it into the try-outs, and this was to be the basis of qualification, together with the winners at the Armed Services championship, for the Trials until 1964. The AAU 10000m event served as the Trials event, and the AAU decathlon and 50k walk were held at Bloomfield, N.J. (June 26-27) and Cincinnati (May 16) respectively. The first of five consecutive California-based final tryouts was held at the Los Angeles Coliseum on June 27-28, 1952, and the crowd totalled 35,795 (with a capacity for two days of 203,000). The women’s meeting was again held on one day, at Harrisburg, Pa. on July 4. The preliminary meetings had been the All-Services Championship at Long Beach (June 7-8), NCAA at Berkeley (June 13-14), and the AAU - also at Long Beach (June 20-21). The climate of California further dominated events in 1956, with the FOT again in the Los Angeles Coliseum (June 29-30), after the NCAA meet at Berkeley, the Armed Services meeting in Los Angeles (both June 14-15), and the AAU in Bakersfield (June 22-23). The crowd this time was almost double that of 1952 at 71,000. The women’s meeting was for the first time a final Olympic Trials meeting separate from the AAU championship, and was held in Washington, D.C. on August 25. Stanford was the venue for the 1960 Olympic Trials on July 1-2, after a repetition of the NCAA/AAU venues from 1956 of Berkeley (June 17-18) and Bakersfield (June 24-25). The OT meeting attacted a record two-day crowd of 108,000, with 62,000 attending on July 2. The Armed Services championships were held at Quantico on June 10-11. The AAU 10,000m at Bakersfield was the OT event, and the AAU events for the 20k walk (Baltimore - July 17), 50k walk (Pittsburgh - July 3), and decathlon (Eugene - July 8-9) functioned as Olympic qualifying events.