At 2:55 p.m. EDT, today, Brenda Taylor will, as the cliche goes, go for the gold. The Watauga graduate will run for the gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Taylor, reached the finals on Sunday when she finished fourth in her heat. Taylor, who won the 2001 NCAA championship in the 400 hurdles as a senior at Harvard, did not make things easy for herself. She finished with a time of 55.02 seconds. “I didn’t see the other runner on the outside,” Taylor said on Press Point.com “I didn’t want it to be that close. I really wanted to qualify first or second and it was closer than I wanted. You learn from the early races, but you’re just thinking about qualifying. I know I have to come out faster in the finals. That’s the plan.” Fellow American Sheena Johnson was third in the first heat with a time of 54.32 and qualified. Taylor’s semifinal time was the 11th fastest overall. Should Taylor medal, she would be the second local athlete at the Athens Games to do so. On Tuesday, Appalachian State graduate Melissa Morrison won a bronze medal in the 100-meter hurdles. Taylor was inducted into the Watauga Sports Hall of Fame last week. She is the second Watauga graduate to run in the Olympics. The first was Abraham Morlu, who ran the 100-meter dash for Liberia in the 2000 Sydney Games. • NBC will televise the event. It will be carried at Geno’s Sports Lounge. |