De Reuck Is in It for the Long Run

Colleen De Reuck clutched a small American flag and raised it toward the clear blue sky as she crossed the finish line, refusing to let go even when she bent over to catch her breath and someone draped a huge flag around her shoulders.

Although she had represented her native South Africa at three Olympics, winning the U.S. Olympic marathon trials and a spot on the U.S. team at the Athens Games overwhelmed her as nothing else had on a leafy course that ended in lush Forest Park. The adrenaline surge that carried her up a hill and past favorite Deena Kastor just past the 24-mile mark Saturday was nothing compared to the surge of joy she felt after setting a U.S. trials record of 2 hours 28 minutes 25 seconds.

“I’m just so thrilled,” said De Reuck, who will be 40 in nine days. “I can’t express it in words. I’ve got goose bumps.... I wasn’t thinking about winning the race, just of getting the top three.”

Kastor, the U.S. marathon record holder, finished second in 2:29:38 after pausing twice to remove a rock from her shoe and battling exhaustion she blamed on a nutritional deficiency. Jen Rhines of Philadelphia, who has trained with Kastor and the Team USA-California group in Mammoth Lakes, produced a late kick to finish third in a personal-best 2:29:57 and get the final Olympic berth.

“I wouldn’t want to be on this team with any other women,” said Kastor, who joked that De Reuck “passed me like a sprinter” when she was too depleted to respond. “I looked over my shoulder 12 times to make sure I was going to make it to the finish line without another Colleen.”

No one else overtook Kastor, but Rhines passed early leader Blake Russell at the 26-mile point to win her ticket to Athens.

Russell set a blazing pace with mile times of 5:39 and 5:09 on the track at Francis Field, site of the 1904 men’s Olympic marathon. She reached the halfway point at 1:11:58 but couldn’t maintain it and was passed by Kastor at 17 1/2 miles and by De Reuck just past the 20-mile point. Rhines, whose qualifying time of 2:41:16 was the 30th-fastest, delivered the final indignity achingly close to the end.

“That was the hardest quarter-mile of my life,” Rhines said. “The time I ran is what I thought I was capable of, but I just hadn’t done it.”

Said Russell: “I went out hard and went with what I felt. I went after it, and hopefully next time it will work.”

Although U.S. women haven’t won a marathon medal since Joan Benoit Samuelson won the first women’s marathon in 1984, their prospects appear brighter. Saturday’s race marked the first time three women ran faster than 2:30 at the U.S. trials, and the top seven times were the fastest times for those places at the women’s trials. In 2000, only Christine Clark met the time standard for the Sydney Olympics, and she finished 19th at the Games. The top 10 finishers Saturday met the Athens standard of 2:37.

“I think we have a great team,” De Reuck said.

De Reuck began running when she was 5, sprinting to the grocery store while her mother held a stopwatch. Her father and brothers ran ultra-marathons and drew her to distance running. She finished ninth in the Barcelona Olympic marathon, 13th in the 10,000 at Atlanta in 1996 and 31st in the Sydney marathon in 2:36:58. “[South African officials] said they’d never put me on another team. I was too old. I caused too much trouble,” said De Reuck, who moved to the United States in 1993 and became a citizen in 2000.

She said she admires Kastor’s devotion to training but can’t do the same because she’s busy taking her 9-year-old daughter, Tasmin, to dance class and soccer games and caring for the family’s dog and two cats.

“I’m just a regular mum,” De Reuck said. “I’m always vacuuming.”

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Sylvia Mosqueda of Los Angeles did not finish, because of a leg injury.... De Reuck won $35,000, Kastor $30,000 and Rhines $25,000. Each will get a $10,000 bonus for running the Athens marathon. Kastor plans to run the 5,000 and 10,000 at the U.S. Olympic trials in July, but only for speed work.