Preview of Women’s 800 Meters at 2013 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships
Montaño, Martinez and Then Who?
by LetsRun.com
June 18, 2013
Here are the leading ten entrants based on 2013 seasonal best time for the women’s 800 at the 2013 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships which gets under way Thursday in Des Moines.
1 1:58.18 Brenda Martinez 2 1:59.43 Alysia Montaño 3 2:00.58 Phoebe Wright 4 2:00.68 Latavia Thomas 5 2:00.94 Lea Wallace 6 2:00.98 Laura Roesler 7 2:01.08 Ajee' Wilson 8 2:01.11 Geena Gall 9 2:01.14 Heather Kampf 10 2:01.52 Chanelle Price
We’ll add in one wild-card name to consider: Maggie Vessey. The 2011 World Championship 6th placer only started her season last week with a 2:03.40 win.
Based on the above list, you should realize it’s very easy for us to pick two of the three team members for Moscow.
Brenda Martinez has been on fire this year. She’s the leader in the US at 800 (1:58.18) and also picked up an ‘A’ standard time in the 1500 of 4:04.86. She will make the team.
By her lofty standards, 2012 Olympic finalist Alysia Montaño was far from impressive at the Prefontaine Classic earlier this month, but she still ran 1:59.43 at Pre and 1:59.43 will make the team.
Assuming Montaño plays it a little bit safe and doesn’t go out crazy hard (as she often does), she too will make the team. We’re not quite convinced she’s in the same form she was last year (last year she came into the Trials after a 1:57.37 at Pre), so if she goes out in 55.88 like she did at last year’s Olympic Trials, she could conceivably blow up her own Moscow spot but that’s highly unlikely.
‘Who gets the third spot on the World Championship team?’
That’s a tough question to answer.
If you’d asked us before the Pre Classic, we’d probably have said 19-year old, 2012 World Junior champion Ajee’ Wilson. Wilson went pro after high school last year and was undefeated heading into Pre where she was third in the ‘B’ heat at 2:01.24.
After that, we’re wondering, ‘Is her limit 2:01 flat right now?’ That’s not likely good enough to make the team.
Wilson fans need to hope she just had an off day.
The winner of the Pre ‘B’ heat was Phoebe Wright. Wright is the leading candidate for the third Moscow spot as a result as in addition to Wilson, the Pre ‘B’ race had many of the other contenders for spot #3 including 2012 US Olympian Geena Gall, Latavia Thomas, Lea Wallace and Chanelle Price.
Every contender was actually there except for Heather Kampf and Kampf lost to Wright, Thomas, Wallace and Gall at the USATF High Performance meet.
As for our ‘wild-card’ Vessey, we don’t know what to expect – that’s why she’s our wild-card. She’s run 1:57 in the past, but it was nearly impossible to predict what she was going to do on a given day when she was in her prime, let alone running her second race of the year at USAs. She’s consistently been inconsistent.
She’s a big-talent, but she didn’t make the team last year at age 30 when she was racing consistently so why would we expect her to make it at 31 in race #2 of the year?
We don’t.
Quick Take (QT) #1: In the end, spot #3 may come down to Gall, Wright and Wilson – the past, present and future. Gall made the team last year, Wright seems to be in the best current form and Wilson is probably going to make it in the future.
QT #2: As for who wins between Montaño and Martinez, we’re tempted to go with an upset and say Martinez. Martinez did beat Montaño handily at Pre and Martinez can stalk the front-running Montaño, but Montaño was 5th in the Olympics so we’ll stick with her.
QT# 3: If you read our men’s 800 preview, you likely saw our rant about USATF arbitrarily filling out the fields. There just seems to be no logic. You can see more of that here in the women’s 800.
In the men’s 800, they accepted 28. In the women’s, 34 as shown below.
Email us if you see some logic behind this.
2013 Women’s 800m Declarations For the USA Outdoor Track and Field Champs | ||||
Name | Affiliation | Mark | Status | Declaration |
Alysia Montano | Asics | 1:57.93 | qualified | declared |
Brenda Martinez | New Balance | 1:58.18 | qualified | declared |
Geena Gall | Nike | 1:59.24 | qualified | declared |
Phoebe Wright | Nike | 1:59.72 | qualified | declared |
Maggie Vessey | New Balance | 1:59.98 | qualified | declared |
Erica Moore | Nike | 2:00.05 | qualified | declared |
Chanelle Price | 2:00.15 | qualified | declared | |
Latavia Thomas | Nike | 2:00.68 | qualified | declared |
Ajee’ Wilson | adidas | 2:00.91 | qualified | declared |
Lea Wallace | Nike / SRA Elite | 2:00.94 | qualified | declared |
Laura Roesler | University of Oregon | 2:00.98 | qualified | declared |
Heather Kampf | Asics / Team USA Minnesota | 2:01.14 | qualified | declared |
Charlene Lipsey | Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge | 2:01.70 | qualified | declared |
Kate Grace | Oiselle / New Jersey New York Track Club | 2:01.78 | qualified | declared |
Shannon Leinert | Big River Running Company | 2:02.14 | qualified | declared |
Amy Weissenbach | Stanford University | 2:02.29 | qualified | declared |
Cydney Ross | Duke University | 2:02.48 | qualified | declared |
Christina Rodgers | University of Arizona | 2:02.65 | qualified | declared |
Lauren Wallace | University of California, Davis | 2:02.91 | qualified | declared |
Megan Malasartie | University of Georgia | 2:03.23 | qualified | declared |
Greta Feldman | Princeton University | 2:03.34 | qualified | declared |
Bethany Praska | 2:03.57 | qualified | declared | |
Kelsey Brown | Brigham Young University | 2:03.95 | qualified | declared |
Rebecca Addison | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 2:04.01 | qualified | declared |
Bienna Freeman | Jacksonville University | 2:04.08 | qualified | declared |
Stephanie Brown | University of Arkansas, Fayetteville | 2:04.35 | qualified | declared |
Shelby Houlihan | Arizona State University | 2:04.38 | qualified | declared |
Brigitte Mania | University of Connecticut | 2:04.40 | qualified | declared |
Chelsea Cox | Georgetown University | 2:04.41 | qualified | declared |
Christina Cazzola | 2:04.51 | qualified | declared | |
Kendra Chambers | University of Texas at Austin | 2:04.52 | qualified | declared |
Jesse Carlin | 2:04.68 | qualified | declared | |
Benita Taylor | 2:04.72 | qualified | declared | |
Nijgia Snapp | University of Tennessee, Chattanooga | 2:05.00 | qualified | declared |
Amanda Duvendack | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 2:05.07 | provisional | not accepted |
Dominique Jackson | SRA Elite | 2:05.54 | provisional | not accepted |
Kenyetta Iyevbele | North Carolina State University | 2:06.07 | provisional | not accepted |
Stephanie Herrick | Central Park Track Club (CPTC) New Balance | 2:06.11 | provisional | not accepted |
Ahlivia Spencer | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 2:06.22 | provisional | not accepted |
Nevada Morrison | Speed Factory Athletics | 2:06.68 | not qualified | not accepted |
Ericka Charles | Speed Factory Athletics | 2:08.08 | not qualified | not accepted |
Mary Cain | Bronxville High School | 1:59.51 | qualified | scratched |
Dana Mecke | 2:04.43 | qualified | scratched | |
Lyndsay Harper | Brooks / Bay Area Track Club (BATC) | 2:05.21 | provisional | scratched |
Kelsey Williamson | 2:06.06 | provisional | ||
Katie Hoaldridge | University of Texas at Austin | 2:06.81 | not qualified |