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Monday, July 17, 2000
Acuff soars to Sydney
Calallen product earns Olympic berth in jumpoff
By David Lassen
Scripps Howard News Service
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| Associated Press |
| Amy Acuff reacts Sunday after her hight jump of 6-3 1/4, which earned her a berth on the United States Olympic Team. |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Amy Acuff cleared a height, and crossed a gulf as wide as the Pacific: the distance between third and fourth place in the high jump at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials.
By finishing third - as she did by beating Tisha Waller in a jumpoff - the Calallen product earned her second berth on an Olympic team and will compete in Sydney this September. A fourth-place finish would have meant staying on this side of the Pacific.
Karol Damon won the competition, clearing 6-foot-4. Erin Aldrich of the University of Texas was second, also at 6-4.
Acuff faced elimination twice: first when she missed her final jump at 6-4 during the regular competition, then when she missed again 6-4 in the jumpoff. Had Waller made either jump, she would have been third.
"I kind of gave it away," she said, "and then it was given back to me. So I guess it was just meant to be that I would be on this team."
Acuff didn't watch either attempt, first kneeling with her head down, then lying on her back.
"I was just too stressed out," she said. "I couldn't handle it any more. I didn't want to look because Tisha's a friend of mine, and I didn't want to look and be wishing she would miss. She probably deserved to make it, too. . . . I just wanted to listen for the crowd's reaction."
Acuff finally made her tiebreaking jump, clearing 6-31/4, after a five-minute break for a heat of the women's 400 hurdles.
While she said time had been her enemy leading to the trials, because of her interrupted training, in this small instance, it was an ally.
"That delay helped me," she said, "because I was so fatigued I was really having trouble getting any kind of rhythm or power out of my legs. I just lost all my power. I think that's because of my lack of competing."
It was not the first time Acuff and Waller had been in a similar circumstance, though the stakes were certainly much higher this time.
"Tisha and I had a jumpoff at Mt. SAC about two years ago, and she ended up winning it," Acuff said. "I just got so fatigued jumping that I had noodle legs.
"Today I kind of had noodle legs halfway through the competition anyway."
That, she said, reflected training interrupted first by a foot injury in February, then by a late June accident in Los Angeles - on, of all places, Olympic Boulevard.
"It feels so good to make it," she said, "because now I have two months (to prepare) and that's so much time."
"It's more significant in that I have a better chance at the Olympics of medaling," she said. "And also, it was a lot rougher road this time. I think when it's easier, you don't appreciate it as much. . . . It was so stressful in that jumpoff, and to make the team, I'm overwhelmed."
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