Canadian runner eyes Olympic berth — and payoff on big bet
Taylor Milne needs A- game in 1,500- metre race at Burnaby meet on Sunday
We know that despite the enduring myth, not all Canadian “amateur” athletes are struggling financially, living on Kraft Dinner and draining the Bank of Mom and Dad.
But since when do track athletes, especially relatively obscure ones — at least outside their hometown and the track community — have $ 1,000 to throw around on testosteronefuelled bets with brash Belgian runners?
“Oh goodness, I’m just hoping I don’t have to come up with it,” says Taylor Milne, a 1,500- metre specialist out of Callander, Ont.
Milne, a 2008 Olympian who didn’t get past the first round of heats in Beijing, will be running the 1,500 at the Vancouver Sun Harry Jerome Track Classic at Swangard Stadium on Sunday, looking to get under the Olympic A standard of 3: 35.50 to qualify for London.
He’s been close a couple of times this season and getting back to another Olympics is clearly his focus.
But there is also that little matter of ensuring he posts a faster 1,500- metres time before Sept. 1 than one Jeroen D’Hoedt. The bet might have remained a secret if not for the blog post of Canadian marathoner Reid Coolsaet, one of Milne’s training partners.
Coolsaet, Milne and three other Canadian runners were training in Flagstaff, Ariz., in early April when they went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant. Coolsaet invited a group of Belgian runners to join them. Minutes after the group arrived, Coolsaet wrote in his blog, “Jeroen is talking smack about how fast he’s going to run this year. Milne is taken aback by the sheer cockiness and they enter a debate ...”
We’ll let Milne pick up the story from there.
“Even if you haven’t run a 1,500 in your life, you listen to this young Belgian guy talk and you would have made the bet,” he said this week.
“I couldn’t listen any longer. He’s just a nob.”
Milne, 30, met the 22- yearold D’Hoedt briefly last year in Belgium and they raced against each other once. D’Hoedt ran a personal best 3: 36.07 in that race to Milne’s 3: 36.71.
“He did happen to get me there, so good on him, congratulations,” said Milne. “But he sits down at the table and starts talking about how he’s going to run 3: 32. I just disagreed with him. He tried to get me to bet him that he’d run better than 3: 33. It would have been a smart bet because I don’t think there’s any chance in heck he runs that fast.
“I said ‘ you won’t even beat me’ and it just kind of escalated. We shook hands [ on who will be fastest in 2012], then looked at each other and said ‘ Oh, that’s dumb.’ Being guys, though, it was too late.”
D’Hoedt, who is not racing the Jerome, has a season- best of 3: 40.97, while Milne has been under 3: 39 four times, with a season- best of 3: 37.17.
Milne’s personal best of 3: 36.00 was set at the 2008 Jerome, a time that qualified him for Beijing. But he has a love- hate relationship with the meet at Swangard. He recorded a DNF in 2010 and ran a poor 3: 45.56 in 2011.
“Yeah, the last two times haven’t been exactly what I
was hoping for,” he says. “But the circumstances this year are similar to the love part. The last couple of weeks I’ve been zoned in on the Harry Jerome. By the time the race rolls around, I’ll have had a nice three weeks of training in Guelph, sleeping in my own bed, eating my own food.”
Milne had a disappointing Olympics in Beijing, running just 3: 41.56, and concedes he was kind of overwhelmed by the experience. He failed to get himself “psyched up” and fully focused on the task at hand after accomplishing “a life goal” of making the Games.
“I want it bad,” he says of making the team for London. “Career- wise, I’d be a failure ... if I don’t get it done. But I’m a far superior athlete now. It should happen. I’ve worked very hard and I’ll be very disappointed if I don’t make it.”
Milne needs the A standard now, as opposed to two times under the B standard. after rival Nate Brannen of Cambridge, Ont., went 3: 34.22 in Norway 10 days ago. If Milne can get the A either at the Jerome or
the Donovan Bailey Invitational in Edmonton a week later, he then must finish top three at the Canadian Olympic trials in Calgary at the end of June to earn a berth in London.
Brannen pulled out of the Jerome after his run in Norway, but organizers still have a strong field after the late entry of young American star Matt Centrowitz, who has a 3: 34.46 PB and who was the bronze medallist at 1,500 metres at the 2011 world championships. Former NAIA champion Silas Kisorio, a Kenyan, has agreed to be a pacesetter and Milne believes that if things go right, he can go under the standard.
“I was hoping to have it by now, but at this level, it’s so fine. Miss one little move, take off a little bit too early, a little too late and you can you lose that second and a half you need.
“I keep forgetting that when I ran that 3: 36, I was smooth and relaxed. I just haven’t had that race yet this year.”