UCLA track and field Olympic streak ends, but coaches produce medalists

UCLA athletes racked up nine medals in total at the Olympic games this year, but none came came from track and field, a sport in which the Bruins have historically had a strong presence.

At least one member of the program has medalled in every Summer Games since 1984 – and nearly all of the Games before then.

While the Bruins didn’t reach the podium in track and field events in 2016, there were many victorious Olympians who were personally coached for the Games by UCLA greats.

Take Allyson Felix, a USC grad who won two golds and a silver. Felix has made four Olympic trips dating back to 2004, and is a six-time gold medalist and three-time silver medalist.

Felix, a Los Angeles native, never competed at the collegiate level, instead signing professional contracts right out of high school. Without being bound to the coaches at ‘SC, she was free to choose her coach from either side of LA’s track and field iron curtain, or beyond.

She elected former UCLA coach Bob Kersee, and has been training with him for over 10 years.

Ex-Florida Gator Kerron Clement, the gold medalist in the 400-meter hurdles in Rio and two-time medalist in Beijing, also has been under Kersee’s guise for nearly 10 years.

Then there’s Penn State graduate Joe Kovacs, the silver medalist in the shot put. Kovacs has trained at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California, since 2013 under former UCLA track and field director and throws coach Art Venegas.

Former Oregonian English Gardner, who won the women’s 100-meter dash at the US Olympic trials and won a gold medal with Felix in the 4×100-meter relay, joined three-time Olympic medalist Carmelita Jeter in training with former UCLA men’s sprints, hurdles and relays coach John Smith.

All three UCLA coaches – Kersee, Venegas and Smith – have had far-reaching influences on athletes and medalists not only in 2016, but in past Olympics and at the NCAA level for years now.

Kersee’s wife Jackie Joyner-Kersee is a six-time medalist who, along with her eventual sister-in-law and five-time medalist Florence Griffith Joyner, started training under Kersee while he coached at the collegiate level.

Kersee also coached Gail Devers to three golds and Valerie Brisco-Hooks to three golds and a silver in the ’80s and ’90s, and Dawn Harper-Nelson to a gold and a silver in the 2008 and 2012 Games respectively. The three are UCLA grads.

Smith is second only to Kersee in UCLA track and field medal production. Before Jeter and Gardner, he coached the dynamic turn-of-the-millennia sprinting duo of Ato Boldon and Maurice Greene, both four-time medalists. Boldon won one silver and three bronze medals in the 100- and 200-meter dashes across the 1996 and 2000 games, while Greene won two golds, a silver and a bronze across the 100 meter and 4×100-meter relay events in the 2000 and 2004 games.

In 2000, the two finished 1-2 in the 100-meter final, Greene taking gold and Boldon taking silver. The fastest American to ever run the 100 meter, Tyson Gay, also trained with Smith for a period of time in 2015.

Venegas coached a combined 11 national championship throwers and nearly 80 All-Americans at UCLA before leaving the school in 2009. He coached some of the biggest names in NCAA throws history while in Westwood, such as Dan Ames and two-time medalist John Godina.

The one UCLA track athlete that did compete in the Games this year was Meb Keflezighi, who ran his third Olympic marathon. He took silver in the event in 2004 and just missed out on one when he finished in fourth in 2012.

Like so much of the rest of the track and field community, he hasn’t strayed far from Westwood for his coaching.

Bob Larsen has been through it all with him since the day he arrived at UCLA in the mid-1990s. At the time, Larsen was the director of track and field and cross-country.

Regardless, Keflezighi was the last hope in the Olympics after three others didn’t make finals in their respective events. His 33rd-place finish sealed the over-30-year-long streak’s fate.

But while the medals may not have fallen for UCLA’s athletes on the track or in the field this year, Olympic champions have reached lofty heights thanks to the school’s prestigious coaching alumni.