2008 BEIJING OLYMPIC GAMES The 2008 Summer Olympic Games saw 10 former Arkansas Razorback student-athletes make the trip to Beijing in representation of four countries. Arkansas women’s track and field had six of its former student-athletes competing in Beijing. Nicole Teter (800 meters), Christin WurthThomas (1,500 meters), Amy Yoder Begley (10,000 meters), Deena Kastor (marathon), April Steiner Bennett (pole vault) and LaShaunte’a Moore (4x100-meter relay pool) represented Team USA while Veronica Campbell-Brown ran the 200 meters and as a member of the 4x100meter relay for Team Jamaica. Campbell-Brown, the first Razorback women’s Olympic gold medalist in UA school history at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, won the gold medal with a personal-best time of 21.74 In Beijing, her new medal was the fifth in her collection and she became only the second Veronica Brown-Campbell as Jamaica’s flag bearer. woman is history to successfully defend the Olympic 200-meter title. Her clocking, 21.74, is eighth on the all-time list. She also served as Jamaica’s flag bearer at the Opening Ceremonies. Deena Kastor was also after another Olympic medal in Beijing, after having won bronze in the marathon in 2004. In her third Olympic competition in Beijing, Kastor failed to finish the competition after experiencing discomfort in her right foot five kilometers into the race. Nicole Teter, another multi-time Olympian for the Razorback women, competed in her second Olympic Games in Beijing after qualifying at 800 meters in the 2004 games at Athens. A leg injury kept Teter from even completing a lap, as she stepped off the track 100 meters into the race with tears streaming down her face. “I really thought I could just step on the track and get through it,” Teter said. “This is the Olympics. I had to go for it. My first stride, I just couldn’t get on my toes. I went as far as I could and I just couldn’t do it.” April Steiner Bennett finished eighth in the Veronica Campbell-Brown women’s pole vault competition, clearing a personal-best 14-11. It was her first Olympic competition, and she couldn’t help but feel the emotion. “I walked out of the tunnel and onto the track and I started to cry,” Steiner Bennett said. “It was just so overwhelming.” Cristin Wurth-Thomas dittoed Steiner Bennett’s performance by posting an eighth-place finish of her Christin Wurth-Thomas own in her heat of the 1,500 April Steiner Bennett meters. She posted a time of 4:09.70 in her first dose of competition at the Olympic Games. Amy Yoder Begley, one of the most decorated women’s track athletes in Razorback history, also saw her first dose of action in Olympic competition when she competed in the final at 10,000 meters. Her road to Beijing was one of trials and tribulations. Immediately after finishing third at the US trials in Eugene, Ore., Yoder Begley was still uncertain as to whether or not she had made the time standard required to make the Olympic team. Needing to meet the Olympic A standard of 31:45.0, Yoder Begley cut it close and initially thought she was over the standard. “The best way to describe my feelings was I was emotionally paralyzed,” she said. “I was so crushed and so I just laid down on the track because I didn’t know what else to do.” As it turned out, she was credited with posting a time of 31:43.60, 1.4 seconds under the standard. “I couldn’t believe it,” Yoder Begley said. “I went from this incredible low to this incredible high instantaneously.”
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