Posted: July 2, 2004

Athletics: Everything On Track For Webb

From David Monti

(c) 2004 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

After the U.S. Indoor Championships in Boston last March, Alan Webb was standing in the mixed-zone speaking to a reporter from ESPN Magazine. A few minutes before, Webb had the lead in the 3000m two-thirds of the way through the race, but couldn't hold on when his rivals surged. He faded to finish fifth. The reporter was looking to write a story on Webb's apparent demise, from high school record-breaker to a young has-been. What, in a nutshell, had gone wrong?

Before Webb could answer, his manager, Ray Flynn, stepped in and ripped into the reporter, who in turn retorted, "Would you rather I didn't write about him at all?" To which Flynn replied, "Not if you're going write about him like that." The reporter slammed his notebook shut, and strutted away, leaving Webb to perhaps ask himself the same question.

"Regardless of what those people were saying, maybe I am, maybe I was a fluke," Webb said today in a teleconference, remembering his struggles of the last two years. "At some point I thought that things were going to start turning around. I consider myself a pretty persistent person."

His bout with self doubt came to an abrupt end this spring when he went on a mini-tour of Europe after winning two tactical races at the Penn Relays, followed by a personal best 3:35.71 1500m at the Home Depot Invitational in Carson, Calif. At Penn, he won the mile in 4:04:42 two days after winning the 5000m in 13:46.31. Both times were modest, but it was the fact that he closed both races with 55-second final laps that gave his confidence a needed boost.

"I knew it was just a mater of time until things came together," said Webb. "There was never a point when I started running great workouts; I had been running great workouts all year."

In Webb's first race in Europe at Hengelo in the Netherlands in May he finished fourth over 1500m in another personal best: 3:33.70. He finished just tenths behind three top Kenyans, including world 5000m champion Eliud Kipchoge and Olympic bronze medalist, Bernard Lagat. At his next stop in Seville, he ran a personal best 1:46.53 over 800m, winning the "B" race. But it was three days later at the IAAF Super Grand Prix in Ostrava, Czech Republic, that Webb turned heads. In what Lagat's manager would later describe as "one of the gutsiest runs I've seen," the 21 year-old Webb stuck to the heels of pacemaker Roman Oravec and ran away from the likes of Ivan Heshko, Timothy Kiptanui, Lagat and Ali Saïdi-Sief to win in yet another personal best 3:32.73. It was a whole different feeling.

"Every single week I feel like I can do better than the previous one," Webb said. "If I'm in any race with anyone else, I think I can run with a lot of people. One of the things I learned this year is that great things happen when you just go for it."

Webb steps into the U.S. Olympic Trials which open on 09-Jul in Sacramento, Calif., as one of only two Americans with the Olympic "A" standard at 1500m (the other is Grant Robison), and is the odds on favorite to win his first Olympic team berth.

"Just making the Olympic Trials meet istself is a huge, huge step in my career," said Webb who was still in high school in his hometown of Reston, Va., when the last Trials were contested in 2000. "Making an Olympic team has been a goal of mine since I started when I was six years-old (he started off playing soccer and swimming). That would mean more to me than anything else I've accomplished in track."

No American man has won an Olympic medal at 1500m since Jim Ryun --the man whose high school mile record Webb broke in 2001-- earned a silver in 1968 in Mexico City. Although any athlete would like to see that as a possibility, Webb is taking things one step at a time.

"It would mean a lot," he said of the possibility of winning an Olympic medal. "That being said, you guys are starting to get a bit ahead of yourselves," he added, playfully chiding the reporters. "I haven't even made a team yet."

Webb is not only running well, but he's living well, too. With a long-term contract with Nike providing a solid financial base (estimated at $250,000/year), he recently bought a new house in Reston, and is excited to be back in his hometown, near his family.

"I just bought a house in Reston one mile from my parents," he said adding, "I've got a girlfriend, believe it or not. My life is really good now. I've got no complaints. I've sort of got my life on track."