In 2018, old Hayward Field turned off the floodlights just one year after its centennial. In the stadium with the most aroma of American athletics there were many historical moments for the ‘track and field’: six Olympic ‘trials’, seven national championships, 20 world records and 44 editions of the Prefontaine Classic, the rally in honor of Steve Prefontaine, the first star long distance runner in the country and an icon since the seventies and after his death in a traffic accident at the age of 24. This spring, the modern Hayward opened its doors and just two months have been enough to enter the history, but of Spanish athletics.
The Galician Carmela Cardama completed last Thursday (Friday morning in Spain) the work that had begun in 2019, when the title of NCAA champion of 10,000 meters escaped her on the last straight after starring in a spectacular comeback. With a pandemic in the middle in which he could not return to Vigo until the fall of 2020, Cardama closed his fourth and final year in Oregon with the university nationals in his second home, the renovated Hayward Field in Eugene. She did it with a landslide victory at 10,000 that makes her the first Spanish athlete in history to win the NCAA. Yes, there had been eight second places and four third places. “I hadn’t even looked at these numbers and I hadn’t realized how much all this meant,” he confesses.
To win, Carmela played heads-up with Mercy Chelangat of Alabama. A little over two and a half kilometers from the finish, she escaped in the footsteps of the Kenyan, whom she tried to take off without success with a first attack with 900 meters to go. Yes Cardama would achieve it after the bell, accelerating before the impotence of his rival to win with a final time of 32: 16.13. “I knew Chelangat was going to be my biggest rival and I had prepared him thoroughly with that last 1,000 progressive. What surprised me is that she did not stand shoulder to shoulder with me and then I did not need to make the final change in the last 50 ”, explains the Galician. “I was relieved when I reached the finish line and I saw that I was not going to have to kill myself to win, although I had trained a lot those last 50 meters because in 2019 I lost the title for not knowing how to run them,” he acknowledges.
With those 32: 16.13, Carmela made a personal best for ten seconds and placed not only the Spanish leader of the year at 10,000, but also fourteenth in the national ranking as always. It is the best record of an athlete born in Spain since 2010. “And although I think I can go below 32 minutes, this is what it is,” he says.
In addition, Cardama Baez (there it is common for both Spanish surnames to be cited) has all the ballots to, in the medium term, earn a place in the Oregon Hall of Fame as one of the best long distance runners of all time. There he would share honors with Olympic medalists such as Matt Centrowitz, Galen Rupp and Joaquim Cruz, former global marquists such as Asthon Eaton, the legendary Steve Prefontaine, and Nike founders Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight.
Carmela’s endorsement is that she is the second woman in the history of the university to win 10,000 in the NCAA after Kathy Hayes in 1984, that her brand-new 32: 16.13 is the second best mark ever in the program and that her 15 : 25.41 in 5,000 is Oregon’s indoor record. In addition, she will be remembered as the Ducks’ first NCAA champion at the new Hayward Field. However, he is left “with the thorn of not having broken the records of 5,000 (15: 23.03) and 10,000 (32: 06.64), which in a season without Covid I think he could have done them.”
Cardama’s future is to stay in the United States, although before he will try to get a ticket for the Tokyo Olympic Games, either looking for the minimum of 5,000 before the Spanish Championship (June 25, 26 and 27 in Getafe), either by the complicated way of the World Ranking. “I have not yet decided the brand with which I will sign, but I hope to do so soon so that I can define my calendar,” explains the Galician. “They are going to be very busy days, because although I have been with this process (choosing a training group) since October, now I can finally have conversations and make decisions that I could not before because the NCAA does not allow it,” he adds.
Whether or not she goes to Tokyo, ends up training in Boulder (Colorado) or Flagstaff (Arizona), or anywhere else in the United States, Hayward Field will always have a place in Carmela Cardama’s heart. And that’s why he wants to return to Eugene sooner rather than later: “I would like to race in the World Championship next year, but hopefully this year at the Prefontaine Classic. That they invite me even if it is as the favorite of the fans.
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