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When I was a senior in high school, I was a nationally competitive cross country and track runner. There were a couple of other guys in town that were in my league, and we did a lot of training run together. Neither of them ever amounted to any more than I did, but there was a freshman that came along that was a little slower than us but still the fastest freshman in a long, long time. He was 3rd in the region which was the year that I won it, and he qualified for state as an individual, which was a pretty big deal. My friends and I went on to college careers (vaguely disapointing in my case), but that freshman went on to win 2 state cross country titles and about 6 or 7 track championships. He went to a D-I school on a full scholarship (both of my friends did the same, actually) and won an NCAA championship and then ran in 2 World Championships and the Atlanta games. Being American and a distance runner, specifically the steeplechase which is absolutely owned by the Kenyans, he didn't amount to much, although he did make the finals.
Looking back, I probably would have rooted for him if he wasn't such an arrogant little shit.
My college track and XC coach was 4th in the pole vault trials in '80, but Carter had already ruled out sending a team by the time those rolled around, so it's open to debate whether or not he would have finished that low. He had 2 of the top 10 jumps that year. He's got lots of hardware to show for it, and most track geeks remember him.
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