Indianapolis, IN (Best E Casino) - USA Track & Field announced the finalized roster for the 2008 Beijing Games and the impressive list of athletes includes 15 Olympic medalists and 31 World Outdoor Championship medalists.
The 126-member team is led by three individual gold medal winners from the 2004 Athens Games in Shawn Crawford (men's 200m) and Jeremy Wariner (men's 400m) and Angelo Taylor, who won gold in the men's 400-meter hurdles at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Wariner joins a list of multiple medalists (Olympics & Worlds) that also features women's sprinters Allyson Felix, Lauryn Williams, Sanya Richards, men's sprinter Tyson Gay, men's distance runner Bernard Lagat, men's shot putter Adam Nelson and men's decathlete Bryan Clay.
The U.S. squad also features 11 participants who hold American records, including women's pole vaulter Jenn Stuczynski, who broke the national record at the Olympic trials earlier this month.
"This Olympic Team is one of our strongest ever, with more medal-winning experience in a wider range of events, from sprints to distances and field events, than we've had in many decades," said USATF President/Acting CEO Bill Roe. "While it would take an incredible performance to match our medal counts of recent championships, we certainly feel that this team has what it takes to again top the medal tables."
The U.S. has garnered a total of 713 medals in track & field or more hardware than the next five biggest winners combined. Four years ago in Athens, USA won a total of 25 medals in track & field, eight of them gold to record the highest U.S. medal tally at an Olympics since the 1992 Games in Barcelona.
Team USA is also coming off an incredibly successful showing at the 2007 World Outdoor Championships in Osaka, Japan, where they won 26 medals -- 14 gold. That tied the World Championships record for gold medals, a mark set by the U.S. in 2005.
The relay pools for both men and women were also released on Monday and featured few surprises. The women will choose from Felix, Muna Lee, Lauryn Williams Angela Williams, Mechelle Lewis and LaShaunte'a Moore in the 4x100m and Richards, Mary Wineberg, Dee Dee Trotter, Monique Henderson, Natasha Hastings and Ebonie Floyd in the 4x400m.
The men's side will select a 4x100m team from Gay, Walter Dix, Darvis Patton, Travis Padgett, Rodney Martin and Leroy Dixon. The men's 4x400m squad will be picked from a pool of Wariner, LaShawn Merritt, David Neville, Reggie Witherspoon, Calvin Smith and Darold Williamson.
Relay runners could also be selected from anyone already on the roster in an individual event.
