DES MOINES, Iowa –
Omar Craddock couldn't hold himself back.
Moments after he clinched a bronze medal and his first global championships berth in four years, Craddock ran straight from the jumps pit to Drake Stadium's trackside railing and pulled himself over and into the stands. He hugged seemingly anyone who stood up. Once he embraced several fans, he found exactly whom he climbed the bleachers for in the first place. His mother.
"Getting that hug from my baby, it was just awesome," said an elated Angela Craddock.
Craddock flew his mother in from Texas for Friday's triple jump final at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships. The last championship meet his mother saw him compete in was the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials, where Craddock finished fourth and missed the team by five centimeters. She had plenty of company in the stands. Craddock's younger sisters and brother were with her, as were some family members from nearby Rockwell City, Iowa.
Once Craddock shared the special moment with his family, he continued to repay the lucky fans in Section 26 for their support throughout a lively 90 minutes of triple jumping.
"It's been four years since I made a team. It means everything," Craddock said. "It was just love. It was excitement. I had to go share that with the people of Iowa."
As Craddock made his rounds, former Gators teammate
Will Claye threw down what appeared to be a title-winning jump. Claye sprung out of the pit and eyed the crowd as he jogged toward the electronic scoreboard positioned just off the infield's 40-yard line. There he waited. And waited. The 10 seconds that passed felt like 10 minutes. Then 17.68 meters flashed on the board, and Claye dropped his head. He was six centimeters short of the new champion, Donald Scott.
Yes, his second place finish clinched a World Championships berth (only the top-three finishers with the meet's entry standard qualify from USATF Outdoors), but Claye and his former Florida teammates won this event every year from 2011 through 2017. Expectations are higher for Gators triple jumpers.
"I'm not happy with it," said Claye, this year's world leader, as well as the reigning Olympic and World Championships silver medalist. "It was one of those days where you feel good but just don't execute the right way. I'm going to go to Doha and make up for what I did today. That's the plan."
Drake Stadium and its famous blue oval have been good to the Gators this decade.
Florida's men won the program's first-ever NCAA Outdoor Championships team title here in 2012. That year, Craddock won the first of two consecutive triple jump national titles. In 2013, Craddock won the first of his two career American titles (the other came in 2015, when he last qualified for World Championships). And back in 2011, Claye and teammate
Christian Taylor combined for one of the greatest collegiate triple jump competitions in history.
"This is definitely a sentimental track for me," Claye said. "This is where my last collegiate meet was. Me and Christian duked it out here. That's why I was hoping he would jump today."
Taylor's only "jump" of the day was a quick sequence of hops from about five meters behind the board. He never made it anywhere near the pit. Such is the luxury of being the defending world champion.
The World Championships awards automatic berths to reigning gold medalists from the most recent global championship (i.e. – Olympics or World Championships). Taylor has won each of the last three, taking gold at Worlds in 2015 and 2017, along with the 2016 Olympics. He is also sandwiched between Claye and Craddock in the world rankings this year.
Even though Taylor didn't jump, he cheered and challenged his former teammates and
KeAndre Bates, a Gators horizontal jumper who exhausted his eligibility following the 2018 season. Most notably, Taylor, sponsored by Nike, wore an orange Gators shirt the entire evening.
L to R: Claye, Craddock, Bates, Taylor.
"I feel like I had the best seat in the house," Taylor said as his eyes lit up. "They were really getting the crowd involved. The energy was just unreal."
Claye and Craddock, both of whom enjoy playing the role of showman, made sure the crowd supplied the fuel they needed to put on a dazzling performance.
Prior to his third jump, Craddock walked over to Section 26. "Y'all are snoozing. I need y'all," he said. As Craddock trotted back to the runway, his coach, 1984 Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner, delivered a fiery response: "Wake me up!" Craddock obliged, eliciting the largest roar of the entire competition for a
huge jump that was a foul by mere millimeters.
"I want him to do that, because if he doesn't, he's too tense," Joyner said of Craddock's dialogue with the crowd. "In order to release that tension, he has to do something like that. I was trying to get him really riled up."
Claye immediately followed Craddock with what turned out to be his best jump of the day, one which measured 17.70 meters. Once he emerged from the pit, Claye turned to the crowd and yelled, "This is my runway!"
It was a tremendous exchange, and the fans in turn responded to Claye's and Craddock's calls for rhythmic claps the rest of the competition. Still, as exciting as it was, Claye was disappointed Taylor chose to sit out. The two have essentially chased the world record together for the last four years. They've come tantalizingly close, with Taylor eight centimeters off (18.21 meters) and Claye missing by 15 centimeters (18.14 meters) earlier this year. Every time they touch the runway, the world record is in jeopardy. That made this a missed opportunity in Claye's book.
"I wanted him to jump," Claye said. "I wanted to compete."
In the grand scheme of what is most important in track and field, though, Friday was destined to be a means to an end. Global medals are the only form of validation that matter. Those will not be awarded until late September, when the trio of Gators reunite as members of Team USA in Doha, Qatar.
"This is only a stepping stone," Taylor said. "The guys are in great shape, and I hope to join the party."
Well, it may have been exactly that to Claye and Taylor. For Craddock, it was a chance to, in the middle of the best season of his career, reestablish himself as one of the nation's elite, and an opportunity to give his mother the joyous hug they were unable to share three years ago at Olympic Trials.
"This was a monkey off his back," Joyner said. "Right now, he's getting ready to shine. This was a big thing to get him back in the groove of making a team. He knows he's got it, and he knows he can do better."
Sounds like Craddock could be sharing hugs with his mother and the people of Doha come World Championships.
