Watson's last-second surge added excitement to a usually mundane event
By ANDY TROEGER
Sports Columnist
When you think of an exciting moment in sports what usually comes to mind? A last second shot? A last minute touchdown, or maybe a bases loaded home run in the bottom of the ninth inning? A race perhaps?
Wait a minute, a race? Exciting?
So maybe most sports fans would not consider a race, such as Luke Watson's school record mile at the Meyo Invitational, to be high on the list of exciting moments. We might concede that it was a great accomplishment, but exciting? Probably not.
But sometime during Watson's run for the records I realized something. Running really can be exciting. There are no timeouts, no breaks in the action. It is sport at its simplest, a race against the competition and a race against time.
Having five of the fastest runners in the world pitted against each other doesn't hurt either.
Watson was in fifth place during much of the race.
He was behind after a quarter mile.
At a half mile he remained in the lead pack.
After three quarters of a mile, he still trailed four other runners.
It was not until the final stretch, the final possible moment, that Watson made his move. "I like to finish hard, I like to beat people in the last 100 or 200 meters," he said after the race.
And beat them he did.
Watson's surge came just in time, as he took the lead within 30 meters of the finish line. To put that in perspective, the final 30 meters of a mile-long race is about the same margin that remained when Torin Francis gave the men's basketball team its final lead over Pittsburgh Sunday.
So it's easy to say that many races have close finishes. After all, some of the shorter track events are won by hundredths of seconds. Being close doesn't inherently guarantee greatness or excitement.
But Watson had one more thing going for him. Besides having a flair for the dramatic he also ran the fastest mile on the planet so far this year. The four men that he passed over the course of the last lap fared pretty well too. They finished with the second through fifth fastest miles in the world this year. Watson's time broke the old school record by two seconds, and he also became only the second Notre Dame runner to ever run a mile in under four minutes.
So next time you think about exciting moments in sports, think about that last second shot, the home run, and the touchdown. But don't forget about the fastest man on the planet this year.
His name is Luke Watson.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Sports Stories for Monday, February 10, 2003
