Hooker, Edwards could emerge as dominant U.S. 100-meter runners

Marshavet Hooker's 10.76 tied her with Evelyn Ashford as the fifth-fastest woman in all conditions. AP Tim Layden's Mailbag Submit a question or comment for Tim Layden. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Tim Layden on Twitter

EUGENE, Ore. -- Marshavet Hooker glided through the finish line in her 100-meter quarterfinal heat Friday night at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials and then heard the voice of public address announcer Scott Davis as he announced her winning time. "10.76 seconds...''

Hooker's first impulse was to celebrate. Track athletes understand immediately the significance of their times. The last time a U.S. woman ran that fast was when Marion Jones ran 10.68 at a meet in Stockholm, Sweden in 2000. Pause. (There are many implications that might be drawn from this last statistic, and I will be happy to outline them. But it's complicated. Keep reading).

Back to Hooker. Upon hearing her time, which is a whopping .24 seconds faster than she had run before this season, Hooker made a decision. "I kept my composure and just walked off the track.'' Soon she would hear that her time was aided by a strong wind (3.4 meters per second; for a sprint time to be legal for record purposes, the maximum allowable wind is 2.0 meters per second). So it's not a PR for Hooker after all. But it was visually fast; Hooker started slowly -- "I got left in the blocks,'' she said -- and then zipped past 2004 Olympic silver medalist Lauryn Williams with ease. Very impressive.

The women's 100-meter title will be decided Saturday night at the University of Oregon's Hayward Field. While it is perilous to pick favorites after two of rounds of four, anyone who watched Hooker's performance would give her a terrific shot at making the U.S. team. The same can be said for defending U.S. champion Torri Edwards, who won her quarterfinal heat in 10.85 seconds with less wind advantage than Hooker (2.3 mps, still not legal).

Williams, Allyson Felix, Muna Lee and Carmelita Jeter are very much in the mix. It's possible they are running for the one remaining spot.

The women's 100 meters has been in a strange place in the U.S. for several years. Think back to the 2004 Trials at Sacramento. Though it would be more than three years before Jones tearfully admitted steroid use and was shipped off to prison for lying to federal authorities, Marion Time ended at those Trials. The subsequent four years have been a muddle.

Kelly White had won two gold medals at the 2003 World Championships in Paris while Jones was pregnant with her first child (with later-disgraced sprinter Tim Montgomery), but White was quickly stripped for a doping violation.

In 2004 Williams came from far off the sprint radar to win a silver medal at the Olympic Games and a year later won the world championship in Helsinki before following that up with a silver behind Veronica Campbell of Jamaica at the '07 Worlds in Jamaica. What Williams has not done is run so fast that she is considered a dominant 100-meter runner. She is appropriately considered to be the ultimate big-race performer.

Edwards inherited White's 100-meter world title in '03, but was later suspended after testing positive for a stimulant. She returned to win the U.S. title last year. Felix, a two-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist in the 200 meters, is the best all-around sprinter in the world but her 100-meter starts are horribly inconsistent. Lee is better at 200 meters. Jeter won a quarterfinal heat on Friday night. Maybe she is on the verge of something.

But for this moment, with two rounds to run, it is all about Hooker and Edwards. They could emerge as the dominant 100-meter runners. Hooker is just 23, a year removed from her college career at Texas. Edwards is 31, a veteran of many wars of all kinds, on and off the track. They are distantly connected -- Edwards trains under John Smith; Hooker under Jon Drummond, who trained under Smith in the 1990s. (Drummond calls Smith "the architect of the drive phase,'' a reference to the sprint technique that Smith honed with Drummond, Ato Boldon and 2000 Olympic 100-meter gold medalist Maurice Greene. Smith also has endured three prominent doping busts in his camp, which a little creates baggage for Edwards and for Drummond and for Hooker. That's just what happens in track).

According to a statistical manual published by Track and Field News that factors wind speed into times, both Hooker and Edwards ran the equivalent of 10.88 seconds under calm conditions, either of which would be a personal best. Hooker got a lousy start. Edwards coasted across the line. There is reason to believe that both will run faster on Saturday.

That's a good thing. And it's a bad thing. The winner could find herself sharing a sentence in many media reports with the now notorious Mrs. Jones, as in "The fastest time by a U.S. sprinter since Marion Jones in.....'' Much like the sentence you see in the upper portion of this story. Sprinters like Hooker and Edwards -- let's assume that they are clean, because Hooker has never had a positive drug tests and Edwards has not had once since here 2004 suspension for a stimulant that even an international body said she probably took inadvertently -- are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Train hard, run fast and people will whisper is you run fast. The key seems to be to run just fast enough.

Track is very much a prove-it-to-me stage. As in, every athlete has to prove himself clean, which, of course, is impossible, because it's very difficult for the public to trust a drug testing system that caught few athletes who have since admitted using steroids. They say the right things: "Our attitude is we're young, clean athletes and you're either with us or you're against us,'' said U.S. sprinter Wallace Spearmon before the meet.

Most people who enjoy track and field -- and who enjoy the company and work of track and field athletes -- would like to be with them. No question.

There are parts of track and field that -- fairly or unfairly -- do not challenge a fan's conscience in the same way. On Friday night, 16-year-old Laura Roesler, who just completed he sophomore year at Fargo South High School in Fargo, North Dakota, finished a remarkable fourth in a heat of the women's 800 meters and advanced to the semifinals Saturday. She was not allowed to compete in her high school uniform, so she wore a funky little pink top that she bought at Target and said afterward, "It's pretty cool to even come her to watch, let alone get to run.'' She said this not long after throwing up in a trash can.

There is little ambiguity in cheering a performance like this, perhaps because it falls within some acceptable statistical range that doesn't invite suspicion. That's not fair. If someday Roesler runs 1:54 she might get a taste of what sprinters endure every day.

Hooker and Edwards are running at a higher level than Roesler. so they are also held to a different standard. Again, not fair, but it's the current reality in a sport riven by doping scandals, largely in the sprint events. Hooker and Edwards and all of the women in the 100 meters need to run fast on Saturday night to earn a trip to Beijing. But they probably best not run too fast.