July 7, 2008

BUFFALO, NY -

By Budd Bailey, Sports Reporter

Allen James is going to complete a circle 28 years in the making Saturday.

James attended his first Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore., as a 16-year-old fan back in 1980. Now the Sanborn resident is ready for what he figures will be his fourth and final Trials appearance as a competitor, and he'll be back in Eugene to do it.

James, now 44, will take part in the 20-kilometer racewalk event Saturday at 10 a. m. (Buffalo time). While he has few illusions about taking the next step and competing in his third Olympics, he likes the idea of joining America's best track and field athletes this week. The trials go through Sunday.

Standards are set for qualifying for the trials in all track and field events. Athletes have from January 1, 2007, to hit a particular mark. James posted a time of 1 hour, 34 minutes, 23 seconds in the Ontario 20K Championships in Welland last September. That was a minute, 37 seconds faster than what he needed to earn his ticket to Eugene.

"I've been able to walk that time for several years," he said. "I decided to do it again. I'm 44. I might as well go."

Once athletes are eligible to compete in Eugene, they are on their own when it comes to getting there.

"I pay my own way out," he said. "If I place in the top 12, I'll recoup most of my expenses. If I place in the top eight, I'll win prize money."

The trip caps a distinguished career as one of the nation's best race-walkers. James entered his first trials 20 years ago in Indianapolis.

"It's overwhelming to compete at that level," he said. "1992 and 1996 were my main trials -- those were when I was highly competitive [and qualified for the Olympics in Barcelona and Atlanta]."

James finished 30th in the 1992 Olympics in the 20K walk, and four years later was 24th in the 50K event. The Western Washington University graduate is a four-time national champion in the 50K walk.

James now works for Toth's Sports in such areas as team sports sales and scoreboards. That and his family duties prevent him from training as much as he did in the 1990s. But he still is in good enough shape to make it to the trials. In Eugene he'll take a first-hand look at a changing period for American race-walking.

Kevin Eastler of Aurora, Colo., is the fastest qualifier at 1:22:56, with Tim Seaman of Chula Vista, Calif., right behind at 1:23:38. Both are veterans who have battled injuries lately.

"There are some young guys coming up, and some older guys moving out," James said. "I'm one old guy doing it for fun. It's a transition period. We've got some good kids."

James will get to say goodbye in a competitive sense to Eugene, probably the running capital of the United States, and its fabled Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus. The facility hosts the nation's best track meet, the Prefontaine Classic, and once was the setting for three straight trials (1972, '76 and '80). This year, it will showcase a new running surface and video scoreboard.

"Eugene is a special place to compete. There's no place like it in the U. S.," James said.

Racewalking is an unusual specialty, and it doesn't attract the attention and interest of an event like the 100-meter dash. James said his discipline doesn't receive the same level of respect in some ways, either.

"With your peers, with other athletes, it does. But in the sports community it's not necessarily true," he said. "We're out there with the hammer throwers. We're away from the main track [for the actual competition]; they said it is for security reasons. . . . It's disappointing that we can't finish in Hayward Field. Finishing there would be a big thing. In one respect, it's sad."

James is going to have fun this weekend, and make sure he takes in as much of that atmosphere as he can.

"Absolutely," he said. "I'm only out there for a couple of days -- it's a `stop and smell the roses' trip. I'm not going to get faster. I'll go out and try to do well. And if I do well, great."

Lynnwood Enterprise: Ex-Olympic racewalker bookends a career

Shorecrest grad competes track and field trials a final time in Eugene

by Tony Dondero, Enterprise reporter

If you're a track fan, maybe you've seen them motoring along the roadway with their hips swinging in that curious gait.

They may not get the press that the sprinters, jumpers and milers get, but racewalkers have been part of the track and field scene at the Olympics since 1908, exactly 100 years.

One of the best American racewalkers of the past two decades is Allen James, 44, a 1982 graduate of Shorecrest High School.

James, who competed in college at Western Washington University, was an Olympian at the Barcelona games in 1992 and the Atlanta games in 1996. Western named him its track and field athlete of the century for his accomplishments in the sport.

He competed in perhaps his last U.S. Olympic Trials July 5 when he finished sixth in the 20-kilometer race walk at Hayward Field in America's track capital, Eugene, Ore. James, who lives near Niagara Falls in New York, was sponsored by the Bond Lake Athletic Club and finished in 1 hour 32 minutes, 12.7 seconds. Kevin Eastler of the U.S. Air Force won in 1:27.07 and earned the berth to the Olympics in Beijing.

It was a good way to bookend a career, said James, who started racewalking while growing up in Lake Forest Park.

"It was a great race," he said, despite battling some blisters on the home stretch. "It was a lot of fun. Not as fast as I used to walk but it was fun being out there with the guys. Started out fairly easy and started picking people off. It's been years since I walked that fast. I said if I walked 1:32, I'd be happy. If I finished in the top eight I'd be really happy."

When he first went to the Olympics in the 20K race walk in Barcelona, Spain in 1992, he finished 30th in 1:35.12. But the experience was almost overwhelming, James said.

"You're just sitting there in awe of the spectacle rather than focusing on the event," he said.

But en route to the 1996 games in Atlanta, James dominated the American scene and was better prepared. He came in 24th out of 52 participants in the 50-kilometer race with a time of 4:01.18, his best finish at the Olympics.

At his peak, James trained 20 to 25 hours a week in addition to working 30 hours a week. For the trials last week he only trained five hours a week.

James qualified for the Olympic Trials last fall in a race in Ontario, Canada, but figured why not go one last time.

"I have a family, there's more priorities than racewalking," James said. He's married to wife Laura, and has two daughters, Teisha, 16, Denae, 12, and son Axel, 10. "Trying to keep up with the family acitivities is the main priority."

James' family stayed back in New York but his mom, Laurel James, owner of Super Jock 'N Jill in Green Lake, and some friends went down to Eugene to cheer him on.

James did cross country, soccer and swimming at Shorecrest and focused on track and racewalking in the summer.

James started racewalking with Shoreline Univac's track club for a year and then joined the Cheetahs track club of Edmonds.

"Summer track is where I primarily exceled in racewalking," he said. "I kept on doing it."

James, the youngest of five brothers, went to Western Washington, an NAIA school, because unlike NCAA schools it had racewalking. At the time, NAIA schools were feeder schools to the Olympic team.

Few schools, even in the NAIA ranks, offer racewalking now so it's tougher for the U.S. to stay competitive.

"We aren't producing the times we used to produce with the quality of participants," he said.

Many racewalkers come from Maine now because its a high school event there, he said.

Race walking's beginnings are traced to the British military, James said. When documents needed to be shipped quickly from one end of a large complex to another, messengers would walk quickly to get them there since it was improper to run through the building.

"It's actually very, very basic," said James, who compared racewalking to what kids do on a pool deck when a lifeguard asks them to walk not run.

"It's a very natural motion," he said. "One of the rules is that your leg has to be straight with the body and one foot has to be on the ground at all times."

James works for a small company, Toth's Sports, in New York that sells and installs scoreboards and electronic message centers locally to schools and other venues.

"Very much sports-related," he said.

Competing at the trials in Eugene, was "icing on the cake," James said, and then referred to a Nike slogan from the 1970s, "there is no finish line."

"It's something I'll do the rest of my life if I can," he said.