Diana Pickler enjoys first day

EUGENE, Ore. – Just after 1 o’clock, with people casually roaming around Hayward Field in the dazzling afternoon sun, Diana Pickler cleared her first hurdle – literally and figuratively – on her inexorable march to Beijing.

“That was pretty cool,” she said. “I was thinking about it right before we started and I told myself, ‘This is a really cool feeling.’ I mean we opened the track and field trials. It’s kind of fun starting it off. It’s awesome.”

The cardboard signs pasted on poles all around the Oregon campus point to Beijing and announce it is only 5,999 miles away.

For Pickler, Beijing and the Summer Olympics are much closer and still so far away.

After competing Friday in the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200, the heptathlete and assistant track coach at Washington State still has a long jump, javelin and 800 to complete before she qualifies for the Olympics.

“I’m in a good spot. I’m happy,” she said as she stopped briefly in the interview area.

Pickler is a gamer.

She started the afternoon running a personal best in the hurdles (13.13) and tying her record in the high jump (6 feet, 1/2 inch). In the most important meet of her life, she seemed impervious to the pressure.

Pickler finished the day in second place, and because she already has made the Olympic standard, if she finishes in the top three today, she will be going to Beijing.

“It’s a nice way to start off with a (personal record) in the hurdles. After you’ve done that you can kind of take a deep breath and go to work from here,” she said. “It’s a hard day, but all I have to think about now is the long jump and getting off to a good start in that.”

Pickler’s twin sister, Julie, also a former WSU track athlete, struggled to an 11th-place finish the first day.

The competition got off to a quick start under a cloudless sky with the temperature approaching 90 degrees: In the very first event of the 10-day meet, Hyleas Fountain broke Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s decade-old U.S. record in the heptathlon 100 hurdles.

Fountain, a two-time national champion in the heptathlon, finished in 12.65, eclipsing Joyner-Kersee’s mark of 12.69. Fountain also bested Joyner-Kersee’s Olympic trials record of 12.71 from 1988, and Joyner-Kersee’s U.S. national championship record of 12.77 from 1991.

In other meet highlights:

•Former Washington State University star Bernard Lagat, who won medals for Kenya at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Games, took the first step toward making his first U.S. Olympic team by reaching Monday’s finals.

“The way I’ve been received here, it’s like I was born here,” Lagat said. “I’m happy to be running for the red, white and blue.”

•University High School graduate Brad Walker – competing at the same track where he set the U.S. record less than three weeks ago – led the pole vault qualifying with a mark of 18 feet, 4 1/2 inches (5.6 meters).

“It was good,” Walker said. “The goal was to take as few jumps as possible and be ready to go on Sunday.

“The crowd is great. I jumped an American record here a couple weeks ago, so I think they remember that. The fans are very supportive.”

•WSU’s Jeshua Anderson led all 400-hurdles qualifiers, winning his heat in 49.05 seconds. Former Cougar Eric Dudley also advanced.

“I was a little scared but I got on the track and just let it all go,” said Anderson of running against the elite competition.

Among those was reigning world champion Kerron Clement.

“It doesn’t mean anything right now,” Anderson said of besting Clement in the prelims. “I just need to make it to the finals, that’s all I’m worried about.”

•University of Idaho’s Russ Winger advanced in the shot put with a mark 64 feet 9 inches.

•The first athletes to secure their Olympic team berths came in the women’s 10,000, led by winner Shalane Flanagan in 31 minutes, 34.81 seconds, breaking the Hayward Field mark set by Mary Slaney in 1982. Kara Goucher and Amy Begley also earned trips to Beijing.

•Marshevet Hooker put her name alongside those of Florence Griffith-Joyner, Marion Jones and Evelyn Ashford.

Hooker ran a wind-aided 10.76 seconds to win her 100-meter quarterfinal, tying her with former world record-holder Ashford as the fifth-fastest woman in all conditions.

“I heard the time first,” said Hooker, an NCAA champion at Texas. “I was like, ‘Wow!’ “

Then, though, she heard the wind speed: 3.4 meters per second, above the 2.0 that’s allowed for a time to count as a personal best or official record.

Still, only world-record holder Griffith-Joyner, Jones, Christine Arron and Merlene Ottey have run faster, regardless of wind. That impressed the other women in what’s considered a talented field, with more than a half-dozen legitimate contenders for the three 100 berths on the Beijing Games roster.

“She was fast. Real fast,” said Torri Edwards, the 2003 world champion in the 100. “I hope she’s tired.”

Edwards won her 100 heat in a wind-aided 10.85, while Carmelita Jeter advanced by winning her heat in 10.97.

Hooker also had the fastest time of the opening round Friday, a wind-aided 10.94.

One woman who did not make it out of the 100 quarterfinals was Chryste Gaines, who clocked 11.15 in the first round but finished seventh in her next race.

Gaines, a two-time Olympic relay medalist, was banned for two years in December 2005, a punishment based not on a positive drug test but on evidence gathered in the criminal investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative and the testimony of fellow sprinter Kelli White.

•Past national champion and 2004 Olympian Walter Davis fouled on all three attempts and did not advance in the long jump.