On Sunday afternoon, Calesio Newman ran the fastest he has ever run in his life in the 200 meter dash. It's what any Olympic athlete would fantasize about during the hundreds and hundreds of hours of training - to run your best when you need it the most. 20.17 seconds should have been good enough for Newman to punch his ticket to London, to wear the US colors at the opening ceremonies and to take the stage in front of the entire world. But it wasn't good enough. 20.16 seconds was the mark for the third and final spot on Team USA in the 200 meters and Calesio Newman heads back to the Carolinas knowing he missed his Olympic dream by 1/100th of a second.
You can watch the 200 meter Olympic Trial final here. Calesio Newman is in lane 8
I remember the first time I heard about Calesio Newman. Doug Hinson was the head football coach at Green Sea-Floyds and he was commiserating with Hags and I about a kid walking the halls of Trojan land who could be the fastest player in the state. Everyone in Green Sea wanted to see Calesio Newman in a Trojans football uniform. During Newman's high school years, GSF had a winning record three times and who knows how many more wins would have been in the column if the three time track state champ had ever put on a football helmet. For Hinson, he had been down this road before. When coaching at Latta, he had a freshman quarterback named Raymond Felton. After one year, Felton put away the helmet to focus solely on basketball. We all know the rest of that story.
Calesio Newman loved track and all he wanted to do was run. He went from Green Sea-Floyds to North Carolina A&T and saw his already blazing times improve. Following his graduation in 2010, he chased the Olympic dream. He got a taste of what it was like to wear the Team USA colors when he won a bronze medal at the 2011 Pan-Am games in the 200 meter dash.
Newman came to Eugene, Oregon looking to get to London and the 2012 Olympic games. He was running in the marquee sprint events, the 100 and 200. He reached the semifinals of the 100 and finished with the 16th fastest time, but it was the 200 where the Olympic dream was within reach. Calesio ran the 2nd fastest time in his first heat and finished second in his semifinal run to make it to the finals. Eight runners for three spots.
Running in lane eight, Newman was able to beat a 2004 Olympic gold medalist and appeared to be in the qualifying spot. After Randall Spearman crossed the line in 19.81 seconds, three athletes surged at the finish line in a photo finish. Maurice Mitchell go there in 20.14 and Isaiah Young did it in 20.16. Calesio found himself on the outside looking in at 20.17. The Greensboro News-Record showed a still photo of Newman looking at his competitors during the final steps of the race which cost him in the end. The 1/100th of a second translates to less than four inches.
The optimist would say "Get 'em next time", but there's one small problem with that. Next time is four years from now in 2016. While Usain Bolt has made a very nice living off of his Olympic fame in the 100 and 200 meters, the other 99.5 percent of the elite runners in the world are scrambling to make ends meet. Newman was an assistant track coach at North Carolina A&T and saved every penny he had so he could chase his Olympic dream.
When you think about how short a second is and then cut it into one hundred pieces, you can understand how 1/100th can haunt a person. I came across this interview on YouTube and was inspired on how Calesio Newman handled himself in the ultimate heartbreak. “This is only fuel for the fire to get me where I need to be,” Newman said after his Olympic dream is shattered. “You haven’t seen the last of me. The best is yet to come.”
That's what makes the Olympics so special. It only happens ever four years. Besides being elite athletes, it takes the ultimate mental toughness to perform knowing that a bad day has a four year price tag with it. The thing is, Calesio Newman didn't have a bad day. He got a 99.99 score when he needed a 100. When the Olympics come and go this summer, the sports fan will shift their attention to college football, the NFL and the baseball playoffs. We won't think about track and field and every other "Olympic" sport until 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. I'm not going to forget about Calesio Newman.
The Grand Strand and Pee Dee is so great about supporting their athletes. Perhaps some words of encouragement from "the 843" can give Calesio the fuel to overcome the heartbreak of missing the Olympics and get him ready for the next chapter.
Here is Calesio's Facebook page if you would like to leave him a message
