By Gary D’Amato, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel –
LONDON — Evan Jager didn’t plan to run to the front of the pack in his heat of the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase Friday. It just kind of happened.
Once he found himself in the lead, however, he wasn’t going to back down.
Jager, 23, a former runner at the University of Wisconsin, wound up getting passed on the home stretch but still finished second and easily advanced to the final at Olympic Stadium.
“My coach will probably be a little mad that I took the lead and pushed, but it worked out in the end,” he said. “I felt pretty relaxed the whole time.
“I didn’t need to sprint at the end. I saw I had it locked up so I just coasted in.”
Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad of France kicked past Jager over the final few meters and finished first in 8 minutes 16.23 seconds. Jager didn’t try to fend off Mekhissi-Benabbad and was content to finish second in 8:16.61.
The top four runners in each of three 13-man heats advanced to the Monday final.
“The plan was to run as easy as possible, staying in the top four or five guys and . . . just saving as much energy as possible,” Jager said. “With two laps left I just accidentally found myself passing Turkey (Tarik Langat Akdag).
“At that point I didn’t want to slow it down and let guys back into the race.”
Jager, who left Wisconsin after his freshman year and moved to Oregon to run professionally under former UW coach Jerry Schumacher, has made astonishingly rapid improvement in the steeplechase.
He won the U.S. Olympic trials after training for the event for less than a year. On July 20, at the Monaco Diamond League meet, he broke the U.S. record with a time of 8:06.81 in his first international steeplechase.
“It’s been a really big acceleration in dropping times and everything,” said Jager, a native of Algonquin, Ill. “The curve hasn’t exactly been gradual and that’s kind of expected, it being my first year.
“Usually you can drop off large chunks of time when you’re inexperienced, as long as you’re fit. I’m just happy that it’s turned out that way instead of negatively.”
Jager, 6 feet 2 inches, has a 36-inch inseam. His father, Joel Jager, said his son was “75 percent legs.” That’s an advantage in the steeplechase because runners must hurdle four 36-inch barriers and jump over a 12-foot-long water pit on each of seven laps around the 400-meter track.
“I’ve got really long legs and my stride is pretty bouncy so I hardly have to jump at all to get over the barriers,” he said. “It’s something I always wanted to try.”
Jager’s heat was the fastest of the three. The other heat winners were Brimin Kiprop Kipruto of Kenya (8:28.62) and Roba Gari of Ethiopia (8:20.68). The times were far off the Olympic record of 8:05.51 set by Julius Kariuki of Kenya at the 1988 Seoul Games.
The world record is 7:53.63, set by Saif Saaeed Shaheen of Qatar in 2004.
“I kind of hope / expected I would be around 8:10 by the end of the year,” Jager said. “I didn’t know exactly how I would handle the event but I’m just very happy that it worked out in my favor as opposed to it being a very long learning curve.”
Jager has no idea what to expect in the final.
“I have to talk with my coaches (Schumacher and Pascal Dobert),” he said. “We’ll talk about the race strategy. I don’t know yet.”
