SDSU Jumper Xiamara Young Keeps Paris Olympic Hopes Alive, Makes Finals

The U.S. Olympic Trials track meet is a landscape of heartbreak and hope — with the Paris Games as the Holy Grail.

Fortunately for Xiamara Young of San Diego State University, she’s still on the hopeful side.

Friday night, on Day 1 of the meet at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, the Aztecs junior qualified for Saturday’s finals in the triple jump. Barely.

Had she jumped an inch less than her first-effort 43 feet, 0 1/4, she would have finished 13th in the field of 26. Instead, she took 11th.

Christina Wende and Arianna Fisher both hop-step-and-jumped 42-11 3/4. But Wende made the 12th and last qualifying spot with her second-best effort of 41-2 1/4. Fisher went home because she didn’t have a No. 2 effort.

Fisher fouled the last two of her three jumps.

A transfer from Fresno Pacific to SDSU, Xiomara (with the X pronounced as Z) came into the meet with a personal best of 13.51 meters (44-4) — set May 25.

If Young equals that mark in the 6:20 p.m. final — and her rivals do no better than they did Friday — she’ll fall short of the three-member team for the Paris Games.

The first three spots Friday went to Jasmine Moore (46-0 1/2), Tori Franklin (45-5 3/4) and Kenturah Orji (45-1 1/2), the American record holder at 48-11 (set at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center in April 2021).

But if Young exceeds expectations, she’ll likely face SDSU Hall of Famer Shanieka Ricketts in Paris. NCAA triple jump champion Ricketts is expected to make her third Olympics after taking 14th at the 2016 Rio Games and fourth at the 2021 Tokyo Games.

On a sunny day with temps in the 80s, a ticketed crowd of 11,000-plus saw 16-year-old high school sophomore Quincy Wilson win his first-round heat of the 400-meter dash in a prep record 44.66 seconds — which also was a world under-18 record.

The phenom from Bullis High School in Potomac, Maryland, broke the U18 world record of 44.84 by Justin Robinson in 2019.

Wilson, the second-fastest quarter-miler Friday, has two more rounds to go, however.

By contrast, San Diego-born Michael Norman — the 2022 world champion on the same Eugene, Oregon, track — clocked 45.31 in his heat, saving energy for Sunday’s semifinals.

Crowd favorites Sha’Carri Richardson and Athing Mu also advanced, in the 100 and 800, respectively. But Richardson stumbled on some of her first steps before recovering and recording the day’s fastest time — 10.88 seconds.

Mu, who hadn’t competed (due to reported hamstring soreness) since last September on the same track, took third in her heat with a time of 2:01.73.

But she was smiling all the same as the crowd warmly embraced her return to competition.

In the day’s only final, American record holder Grant Fisher won the 10,000-meter run in 27:49.47, kicking away from Woody Kincaid (27:50.74) and Nico Young (27:52.40).

Fisher’s breakout moment came 11 years ago when he won the Foot Locker national cross country championships in San Diego. A year later, as a high school senior, he again won the 5,000-meter race.