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Column: The numbers point to a strong showing in Rio for the United States track team

Men's 200 Meter Final winner Justin Gatlin, right, celebrates with third place Ameer Webb, left, and runner-up LaShawn Merritt, center after their race at the U.S. Olympic trials.
Men’s 200 Meter Final winner Justin Gatlin, right, celebrates with third place Ameer Webb, left, and runner-up LaShawn Merritt, center after their race at the U.S. Olympic trials.
(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
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Of the 127 men and women nominated Monday by USA Track and Field to compete in the Rio de Janeiro Games, 84 will be Olympic rookies.

Team members, determined by 10-day trials and filled out with relay pool selections, range in age from 16-year-old Sydney McLaughlin in the women’s 400-meter hurdles to 41-year-old Bernard Lagat in the men’s 5,000-meter race.

Lagat will compete in his fifth Olympics, his third wearing red, white and blue after representing Kenya twice. Olympic trials 400-meter champion Allyson Felix, marathoners Shalane Flanagan and Meb Keflezighi and high jumper Chaunte Lowe will become four-time Olympians. Five athletes who won individual gold medals in 2012 made the team, although Felix won hers in the 200 and will compete only in the 400 in Rio. Five won world titles in 2015.

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But the most important numbers are these: U.S. track and field athletes won 28 medals at London in 2012, the men and women each earning 14. That’s up from the 23 won by Team USA at Beijing in 2008. The number of gold medals (nine) was up from the seven won in Beijing.

Can the newly selected team surpass those numbers?

With the roster complete, executives of USATF’s high performance team will start to come up with a medal projection.

“Typically for Team USA,” spokeswoman Jill Geer said, “a solid performance tends to be in the mid-20s, and there can be variations on either side of that.”

Based on American athletes’ many stellar performances this year — and on the possible absence of many Russians because of the ban imposed by the International Assn. of Athletics Federation to punish Russia’s state-sponsored doping — they have a good chance to increase their medal total in Rio.

Justin Gatlin, who won the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the trials, has run the two fastest times in the world this year in the 100 (9.80 seconds and 9.83) and second-fastest in the 200 (19.75). LaShawn Merritt, winner of the trials 400 and runner-up in the 200, owns the fastest time in the world this year in the 200 (19.74) and 400 (43.97).

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Ameer Webb of Tustin, third in the trials 200 in 20 seconds, also is among the 2016 world leaders. Tyson Gay, who made the finals in the 100 and 200 but couldn’t crack the top three, was nominated for the 400-meter relay pool. That gives him a chance to replace the 2012 relay silver medal he lost because of a doping violation.

There are medal chances in the triple jump, in which Christian Taylor and Will Claye have posted the top five marks this year; the long jump, where Jarrion Lawson’s leap of 8.58 meters (28 feet 1¾ inches) at the trials is the best in the world this year; the shotput, where Joe Kovacs, Ryan Crouser and Darrel Hill have posted top-10 performances this year; the pole vault, in which Sam Kendricks has three of the top six heights; and for Ashton Eaton to repeat as decathlon champion after his world-leading 8,750 points at the trials. In the 110-meter hurdles at the trials, Devon Allen posted the third-best time this year (13.03); top-ranked 400-meter hurdler Johnny Dutch didn’t make the team but Kerron Clement and Michael Tinsley have top-10 times this year.

The women also should thrive. English Gardner’s trials-winning time of 10.74 seconds in the 100 is the second-fastest in the world this year; sprint double entrant Tori Bowie owns this year’s second-fastest time in the 200 (21.99). Former Long Beach Poly standout Ariana Washington, whose 22.21 is the seventh-best 200-meter time in the world this year, was named to the 400-meter relay pool after finishing sixth in the 100 and fifth in the 200 at the trials.

Felix overcame a sore ankle to run a top-ranked 49.68 in winning the 400; teammates Phyllis Francis and Natasha Hastings have the fifth- and eighth-best times in the world, respectively. Top-ranked 100-meter hurdles leader Keni Harrison didn’t make the team but Brianna Rollins has the second-fastest time in the world this year, a trials-winning 12.34 seconds. Kristi Castlin and Nia Ali also have top-10 times.

In the 400-meter hurdles, USC alumna Dalilah Muhammad’s time of 52.88 in the trials final is the best in the world in 2016. Lowe, who’s from Riverside, has the best high jump mark at 2.01 meters (6 feet 7 inches), and 18-year-old Vashti Cunningham ranks fourth. London gold medalist Brittney Reese tops this year’s long jump list. Jenn Suhr, the 2012 pole vault gold medalist, and Sandi Morris have four of the top 10 jumps this year.

The U.S. women are typically strong in those events and could win their first Olympic steeplechase medal because only two other women have posted faster times this year than trials champion Emma Coburn.

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“We have a lot of young athletes but I think we have a good mixture of veterans as well that will pull those young athletes along,” said Connie Smith-Price, coach of the women’s team. “It’s going to be a great competition when we get to Rio.”

That’s where all the numbers must add up.

helene.elliott@latimes.com

Twitter: @helenenothelen

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