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August 25, 2004 10:28 pm

Felix flashes to silver

By Dick Patrick

USA TODAY

ATHENS, Greece — The plan, after they started working together in November, was for Allyson Felix to make the 200-meter final at the Olympics and run a personal best.

Felix, at 18 the youngest member of the U.S. track team, and coach Pat Connolly didn’t emphasize place or medals. Just improvement.

They got all of that Wednesday.

Veronica Campbell of Jamaica beat Felix out of the blocks and to the straightaway to win in 22.05 seconds. But Felix finished second in 22.18, a world junior record. Last year Felix ran 22.11 in Mexico City at altitude, but the time wasn’t ratified as a record because there was no drug testing.

"She broke the world junior record at sea level — pretty incredible," Connolly said. "She ran a beautiful race."

Felix, holding a U.S. flag, didn’t take much of a victory lap. She took a look around a packed stadium and headed to pick up her gear.

"There’s part of me that’s disappointed, but I’m not too disappointed," Felix said. "I’m walking away with a silver medal. If you had told me this last year I don’t think I would quite have believed it."

Connolly did a bit of post-race second-guessing about telling Felix to be patient at the start. "Maybe I needed to tell her to go out harder, which she can do," Connolly said.

Campbell, an ex-Arkansas runner who was third in the 100 last weekend, got out strong in lane 4, just outside of Felix, and had a big lead early in the stretch that Felix reduced.

"About 20 to 30 meters to go, I felt her," said Campbell, 22, a former 100 and 200 world junior champ. "But I knew she was going to run out of room."

In the future, Felix may run down a lot of people at several distances. Connolly thinks she can excel at 100 and 400 as well as 200.

"There’s a lot of work ahead," the coach said. "It takes time, especially if you are a woman and you’re going to do it naturally. She has a lot of room for improvement."

So when do they start training for the 2005 season? "I can’t answer that at this time," Connolly said.

The reason is discord between Connolly and Felix’s agent, Renaldo Nehemiah. All year they’ve disagreed on Felix’s schedule. Even now Connolly thinks Felix should return to classes at Southern California, where school started Monday; Nehemiah wants her to run a race or two on the European circuit.

It will be up to Felix, and possibly her parents, to settle the conflict, which Felix didn’t want to think about Wednesday night. She was thinking of Olympics, world championships and fast times to come.

"I can’t wait for the future," she said.

(Contributing: Greg Boeck, USA TODAY.)

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