Sanchez Opts for Road Less Traveled

Felix Sanchez was born in New York City, raised in San Diego, attends classes at USC and runs the intermediate hurdles faster than any collegian in the United States.

Sanchez is as American as the huge gold Superman logo that adorned the T-shirt he was wearing Friday, minutes after winning the NCAA 400-meter hurdles championship with this year’s second-fastest time in the world, 48.41 seconds.

But Sacramento, site of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials, is not in his future.

“I’ve got my ticket to the Olympics already,” Sanchez said. “All I’ve got to do is go to the airport, pick up my ticket and I’m off to Sydney.”

Because both of his parents were born in the Dominican Republic, Sanchez has dual citizenship, which turned his Olympic qualification program into a multiple-choice quiz:

A) Do I run for the United States and throw myself into the trials crapshoot against Angelo Taylor, Joey Woody, Calvin Davis and Derrick Adkins and hope one of them pulls a hamstring and another trips over a hurdle so I maybe qualify as one of the top three finishers?

B) Do I run for the Dominican Republic, which has no trials and has no logjam, which means I can start packing today?

“I had a choice,” Sanchez said, except it really was no choice.

Sanchez is a hurdler. To get from point A to point B, he already has enough obstacles to clear. Why add another?

So he opted for the sure thing.

He opted to go Dominican.

“Out of the top 10 in the world in my event, six are Americans,” Sanchez noted. “And only three of them are going to make the U.S. Olympic team.

“What if you have a bad day, get sick, hit a hurdle? You have to wait four more years.”

Sanchez ran his first international meet for the Dominican Republic at last year’s Pan American Games, where he finished fourth despite a strained hamstring. At the 1999 World Championships in Seville, Spain, he ran a “fatigued” 49.6, placed third in his heat and failed to qualify for the semifinals.

But emboldened by his senior season at USC, with Pacific 10 and NCAA titles to his credit, Sanchez believes “I have a great chance to be in the Olympic final and to become the first Dominican to place [in the hurdles],”--largely because the hurdles are, well, the hurdles.

“Anything can happen--that’s the funny thing about the 400 hurdles,” he said. “You hit a hurdle, you fall, the wind kicks up and affects your stride path. Last year, I looked at the top 20 times in the world and they were all within one second of one another.

“There’s no Michael Johnson in the 400 hurdles. Anybody can do anything.”

Which is why Sanchez decided to leave as little to chance as possible on the way to Sydney, letting others deal with the angst and anxiety of the U.S. trials.

“I’m just going to sit in the Sydney airport and watch who gets off the plane,” he said with a laugh. “That’s when I’ll know which Americans made it.”

USC OR UNITED NATIONS?

Four members of the current USC track team figure to compete in the Summer Games in Sydney. . . . representing four different nations.

The potential roster:

Sanchez, men’s 400-meter hurdles, Dominican Republic.

Angela Williams, women’s 400-meter relay team, U.S.

Brigita Langerholc, women’s 800-meter hurdles, Slovenia.

Natasha Danvers, women’s 400-meter hurdles, Great Britain.

Williams, of course, first must compete at the U.S. trials--and could also qualify as the third female 100-meter runner behind Marion Jones and Inger Miller. Danvers, too, must qualify at the British Olympic trials in Birmingham, England, in August.

But after winning the women’s NCAA 400-meter hurdles championship Friday with a school-record time of 55.26 seconds, Danvers believes she is in good stead.

“We send the top three in each event--and right now, there are only four girls eligible (to compete in the 400-meter hurdles trials),” Danvers said. “Unless something drastic happens, I’m going to be running at the Olympics.”

By winning the men’s and women’s 400-meter hurdles championships Friday, Sanchez and Danvers became only the second set of teammates to turn the feat, duplicating the intermediate hurdles sweep accomplished by Iowa State’s Danny Harris and Nawal El Moutawakil in 1984.

Sanchez ran his final only 10 minutes before Danvers stepped into the starting blocks.

“When I saw Felix cross that line, it was, like, nerves!,” Danvers said with a laugh. “I want to stand up and yell, ‘FELIX!’ but I couldn’t. I had to conserve energy.”

Moments later, Danvers completed the Trojan double.

“We made history today,” Danvers said. “I’m proud of Felix and I’m proud of myself. We did what we had to do.”

IN FILMS, YOU GET MORE THAN ONE TAKE

UCLA’s Jess Strutzel had just run his last collegiate race, finishing a lackluster fifth in the men’s 800 meters at the NCAA championships.

Was he disappointed?

“A little,” he said.

Relieved?

Without a doubt.

“I’ve kind of been wanting my collegiate career to get over,” he said, “so I can get out from under the grips of the NCAA and start making a living.”

Strutzel, a theater arts major, paused dramatically and punched his forefinger toward the ground.

“My acting career starts . . . now!”

Strutzel will compete at the U.S. trials, with an outside chance of making the three-man 800-meter team, but his first love is film.

“I want to do films for the rest of my life,” he said. “I want to do it all--acting, writing and eventually directing. And I want it to be in films, not TV. I’m not much of a fan of TV. Except for ‘The Simpsons,’ which is the greatest show ever.”

Strutzel recently completed his senior project, a 35-minute student film, which, he proudly notes, received an A.

“It’s sort of my own little twist on the standard Hollywood guy-goes-after-girl theme,” he said. “You know how at the end of all the Hollywood movies, the guy ends up with the girl?

“Well, I’ll be damned if that’s going to happen in my film. I’m not a big fan of happy endings. Because that’s not how life is.”

No, this is how life is: You come to the NCAA outdoor track championship hailed as the favorite because you won the NCAA indoor championship . . . and then you get boxed in early and can’t break free . . . and when you try to make your move, the Carolina humidity knocks you on your heels . . . and you fade to fifth . . . and you close out a memorable UCLA career with a forgettable time of 1 minute 46.39 seconds.

“I’m not terribly pleased,” Strutzel said. “Just one of those off days.”

But it was over, and a plane to Hollywood beckoned.

“As soon as I get home,” Strutzel said enthusiastically, “I’m contacting a commercial agent. Time to get the professional career started.”

MAYBE TRACK NEEDS MORE CRASHES

Sanchez, on the state/plight of track and field in the United States:

“It’s quite ironic. You look at the Olympics and the world championships and the United States comes home with all the medals. Then you look at the stands at meets here and you see only a few people.

“I don’t know. Some say it’s boring to watch people run laps, but then you look at the Indy 500 and they have 100,000 people coming out to watch cars go around the track hundreds of times.

“Track should be a popular sport. It’s pure one-on-one talent. You train all year, you train for hundreds of hours, just for a 10- or 15-minute season. That’s really all the time you’re on the track during competition.

“I would hope track and field becomes more of a fan and spectator sport here, so we can get bigger crowds and the top foreigners would be more willing to come here and compete here. That would mean more exposure and more money being put into the sport.”