With 100 meters to go, Isaiah Harris was leading and staring at a spot in the 800-meter finals at the US Olympic track and field trials. At the finish line, he saw two automatic qualifiers in front of him and his last-gasp lunge for third place was emblematic of the hope he was clinging to that his finishing time was fast enough.
In the end, it wasn’t, and the Lewiston native’s Olympic dreams will have to wait for the next summer games.
Harris placed third in the first of three semifinal heats Friday night in Eugene, Oregon. Only the top-two finishers in each heat were guaranteed a spot in Sunday’s final, with the next three fastest runners joining them. Harris completed two laps around the track in 1 minute, 46.21 seconds — which was just seven-hundredths of a second slower than his runner-up time in Thursday’s first-round heat races.
On Friday, Harris’s time was 16th fastest of the 27 semifinalists. He was doomed by a slow first semifinal heat, with heat winner Josh Hoey’s time of 1:45.73 the 10th fastest of the round.
With just under 100 meters left, Hoey took the lead from Harris, then runner-up Clayton Murphy — the 2016 Olympic bronze medalist in the event — got ahead of him a stride later to shuffle him back to third. Harris leaned forward at the finish line just to hold off fourth-place finisher Isaiah Jewett, causing Harris to fall to the ground.
Harris would have needed a time faster than 1:45.12 to earn a spot in Sunday’s final. His season-best time entering the trials was 1:44.58, which was good enough to meet the Olympic qualifying standard.
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