Eugene's contingent shrinking.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

STANFORD, Calif. - Eleven years ago, in steamy New Orleans, 11 athletes with strong Eugene connections made the U.S. Olympic track and field team. Among them were Lance Deal and Annette Peters, Shelly Steely and Danny Lopez, Kory Tarpenning and Tim Bright.

And that didn't include three Eugene athletes who were fourth in that meet, a spot away - Mary Slaney, Greg Whiteley and Steve Plasencia (twice).

They lived and trained in Eugene, or had done so at some point. They were former Ducks, who had stayed home to train, or athletes who had come to Eugene because it was still clearly the Track Capital of the United States, the legacy of Athletics West still strong, the list of active elite coaches relatively long.

As the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships began here Thursday, it was evident how much things have changed in a decade.

A year away from the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, only two Eugene-based Olympians (from 2000) are in this meet, Marla Runyan - a nationally prominent runner who is the heavy favorite to win her third straight title in the women's 5,000 tonight - and Nick Rogers.

The void left by the retirement of Deal, the silver medalist in the hammer throw in the 1996 Olympics, and by the dispersal of other athletes, such as Suzy Favor Hamilton, who trained in Eugene, has never seemed so huge. Even Maria Mutola, the Springfield High grad from Mozambique, has moved to South Africa to train, in part to avoid allergies, though she continues to be coached by local coach Margo Jennings.

High-altitude training sites such as Boulder, Colo., and Albuquerque, N.M., have become magnets for the distance runners who once came to Eugene in the footsteps of the late Steve Prefontaine. The emergence of a dominant collegiate distance program at Stanford University has produced a large post-collegiate community.

Eugene isn't first choice any more, and despite the annual support for the sport reflected by capacity crowds at the Prefontaine Classic, it's clearly lost a lot of ground.

"These things go in cycles, and you've got to have some critical elements present to have a high involvement of elite athletes," said Tom Jordan, the Pre Classic meet director. "One of them is coaching, and one of them is the athletes being able to have a job or subsistence.

"Having elite athletes come out of the University of Oregon programs is important, because many times those athletes will stay around and continue to train and maybe even be coached by the same college coach. ...

"I've always maintained that it really starts with the coaches. Someone like Suzy Favor Hamilton, the only reason she moved to Eugene was to train with Dick Brown, and you've got the folks like Marla Runyan who came to train and stayed."

Brown has the vision of developing Olympians outside of the traditional collegiate approach. Former UO coach Bill Dellinger, with three athletes here, is active despite having suffered a stroke. The post-collegiate coaches in Eugene are, minus some retirements, the same as a decade ago.

However, Jordan sees the potential for a post-collegiate resurgence, though not necessarily in the distance events that have been the community's chief identity.

"I'm ever the optimist, but I see some of the talent around here," Jordan said. "It will be interesting to see what someone like (Oregon senior) Becky Holliday does, whether she stays here to train, because she's obviously got the potential to be a world-class pole vaulter.

"If Jordan Kent continues to develop - if he were to make a run for the 2008 Olympic Games - he'd only be 24, not even at the peak for a 400-meter runner, which is where I think his great potential is.

"There's potential out there; five years ago that wasn't the case."

So, for Eugene, the compelling stories here can be found in the emerging pole vault stars, Holliday and Sandy High School's Tommy Skipper, and in the concurrent Junior Championships, with young Ducks like Kent and Eric Mitchum, athletes who one day might keep Eugene on the map.