The Official Site of Bryan Clay

Mon, Jun 30th 2008, 16:16

Clay takes slim lead into the Decathlon final today

By Andy Gardiner, USA TODAY
EUGENE, Ore. —
Bryan Clay was just shy of disgusted with his performances Sunday in the first five events of the decathlon. But the world indoor heptathlon champion will carry a narrow lead into today’s final five decathlon events in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.
Clay’s total of 4,476 points has him just ahead of 2006 NCAA champion Trey Hardee (4,454) and 2003 world champion Tom Pappas (4,405).

Clay had the fastest time in the 100 meters but followed that with a poor effort in the long jump that carried over into the shot put. He steadied in the high jump and 400 but ended far short of where he hoped.

With the way training has been going I really am doing horrible. My training has been absolutely amazing. I didn’t put it all together today like I should have. Normally, I am pretty good about doing that.”

“Today I had a good first event, but had a brain lapse through the second event. I opened up with the 400 and that was the fastest opener of the year, but the long jump was very bad for me. It’s one of those things I expected to come out and do certain things. I wasn’t mentally prepared to fight for everything, but it started to come around towards the end of the meet. Hopefully tomorrow it will go better.”

“I think because my training was going so well I expected to come out and not necessarily blow away the field, but I was expecting to do certain things in certain events,” Clay said. “I really wasn’t mentally prepared to have to fight for every single centimeter and every single hundredth of a second, and that’s what I ended up having to do.”

Today’s decathlon events are the 110 hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin and 1,500.