2004 NCAA OUTDOOR TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Mulvaney, Cheseret, Johnson, and Desilets win titles

by Parker Morse

Chris Mulvaney (left) wins the 1,500. (Photos: Alison Wade/NYRR, click to enlarge)

Andy Smith, Ian Dobson, and Jordan Desilets had a three-man battle in the steeplechase, with Desilets (right) coming out on top.

Jonathan Johnson (right) wins the 800m final.

Dathan Ritzenhein (left) tried to take the sting out of Robert Cheseret's kick, but Cheseret ran his last lap in 61 seconds to win the 5,000m final.

The University of Arkansas Razorbacks defended their title at the 2004 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Traditionally a distance-running powerhouse, the Hogs took only 25 of their 65.5 points in the distances, with fourteen coming from the 1,500m. Instead they won championships in the 100m (Tyson Gay, 10.06) and 200m (Wallace Spearmon, Jr., 20.12) to pick up points lost by the graduation of Daniel Lincoln and Robbie Stevens.

Arkansas' second lift from the distance corps (after Alistair Cragg's 10,000m win on Thursday) came in the first distance final on Saturday, the 1,500m, where senior Chris Mulvaney, the 2003 Indoor mile champion and runner-up here for the past two years, won in 3:44.72.

Villanova's Tom Parlapiano (11th, 3:48.81) set the early pace, passing 400m in 60.6 with Arkansas' Said Ahmed on his shoulder. The pace slowed in the second lap, as Parlapiano continued to lead, and Montana's Scott McGowan (seventh, 3:46.34,) Stanford's Don Sage (third, 3:45.03) and Rob Myers of Ohio State (fourth, 3:45.17) moved up behind him. This tight and volatile pack passed 800m in 2:04.6, a 64-second lap.

Finally, BYU's Nathan Robison (second, 3:44.72) took the lead shortly before the bell and tried to string out the field. Mulvaney, previously content to stay out of trouble, spent the backstretch getting in position, waited until the brisk wind from the south was behind him on the homestretch, then sailed past Robison for the win. Sage and Myers also kicked hard, but found themselves unable to close on Mulvaney and Robison. The final lap was covered in approximately 53 seconds. Arkansas got a four-point bonus when Ahmed came in fifth (3:45.66).

"After finishing second for the last two years, it was beginning to feel like I was never going to get it," said Mulvaney after the race. "I didn't want to lose the race through bad tactics. I didn't care if I won it in five minutes."

The steeplechase immediately following was another tightly packed affair, with Andy Smith of NC State (second, 8:45.84) and Ian Dobson of Stanford (third, 8:48.12) leading the early going. They were joined by eventual winner Jordan Desilets of Eastern Michigan (8:42.64) and Aaron Fisher of Ohio State (4th, 8:49.53), and Dobson picked up the pace. With a lap and a half remaining, Desilets made a big move at the water jump.

"I was really nervous after the prelims," explained Desilets. "But this race couldn't have been better. It was to my advantage to wait [in the backstretch] because I had two big guys blocking the wind for me."

Desilets pointed to matching spike wounds on his shins, where he had run close to Dobson's back kick, as proof of a tested strategy. "That one's from the Thursday, and [tonight] he got me again in the same spot."

Jonathan Johnson of Texas Tech, a former Texas high school champion, announced his strategy to anyone who asked after the rounds: go to the front and stay there. "I've been doing that since high school, when it was hard to get people who would run as fast as I wanted to. My strength is good [this year] and I'm feeling better going out." It worked for him tonight, though not without some hard work; Tennessee's Marc Sylvester (fourth, 1:47.23) challenged him in the first lap, and at the far corner of the last lap. Even when Sylvester faded, Georgetown's Jesse O'Connell's (second, 1:46.79) scorching kick threatened to overtake Johnson at the line. Arkansas picked up an extra point here with junior James Hatch placing eighth in 1:47.78.

With the sun down, the track still hadn't cooled down much when the crowded men's 5,000m got underway. Colorado's Dathan Ritzenhein moved to the lead by the end of the second lap and reached the first kilometer in 2:50, with Arizona's Robert Cheseret lurking in fifth after recovering from a stumble on the second lap. "I scraped my knee, and that bothered me a bit," reported Cheseret, "But once we started racing, I forgot about it and ended up having a good race."

By halfway it was Ritzenhein, Cheseret and Stanford's Louis Luchini, with Ritzenhein leading through the second and third kilometers, both in 2:46. As Luchini gradually fell off in the closing two kilometers, (2:47 and 2:38) Ritzenhein faced the same problem as Alistair Cragg had two nights before in the 10,000m: shaking Cheseret from the front. Ritzenhein tried to grind Cheseret down with a hard pace, but in the final straightaway the Arizona sophomore sprinted past to take the win in 13:49.85 to Ritzenhein's 13:52.13.

"I was glad that I didn't have to run on Wednesday night," said Cheseret. "I was able to run the 10,000m fresh. But at Pac-10s I ran a triple, and that got me used to running rounds. If the pace was slow, I was going to pick it up, but if the pace was moving, I would do what I did. [Ritzenhein] actually ran my race."

"I tried to out-run him, basically," explained Ritzenhein. "I thought that was the best way to do it, but it's hard to run from the front like that. I tried to take the kick out of him. I think I'm in better shape than 13:52, but to run that from the front is tough."

Wisconsin's Matt Tegenkamp, no stranger to chasing Ritzenhein's duels with Kenyans, took third in 14:11.45, passing Luchini not long after the Stanford senior fell off the pack. Luchini finished in 14:16.44. After Cheseret, the other 5,000m/10,000m doubler, his Arizona teammate Kyle Goklish, placed sixth in 14:20.73.

Arkansas' move to dominance in the sprints denied points to sprint-driven rivals, leaving Florida a distant second with 49 points and LSU third with 31. Arkansas turned out to have the title locked up after Spearmon's win in the 200m.

(Updated June 14, 2004)