Torres echoes Goucher again; Stanford overwhelming team winner

By Parker Morse

Jorge Torres runs away from Alistair Cragg in the final meters of the race.

The past year was a string of second-places for Jorge Torres. He finished second behind the nearly-untouchable Boaz Cheboiywo of Eastern Michigan at the 2001 NCAA Cross Country Championships, then followed that up with a second-place finish to Arkansas' Alistair Cragg in the 2002 indoor 5,000m. To complete the set, he wound up second to Alabama's David Kimani at 5,000m outdoors.

Coming in to Monday's Cross Country Championships, it looked as though Torres would do well to manage another second place. The race was generally considered to be a contest between four strong challengers (Torres, Cragg, Kimani and BYU's Kip Kangogo) and Cheboiywo, and Cheboiywo's dominant front-running last year made him look like the favorite of the five.

Cheboiywo himself welcomed the challenge. His defeat by Kangogo at the Griak invitational early in the season was, he said, a chance to "examine my strengths and my weaknesses." Looking intently at his questioners in the pre-race press conference, he promised to "run like a wounded lion."

So when the men's pack took off in Terre Haute, it was no surprise that Cheboiywo was among the leaders. Likewise Torres, Cragg and Kimani moved directly to the front. Kangogo, victim of a muscle strain in his regional meet, hung back, perhaps uncertain of his recovery, and was not a factor. Last year, Cheboiywo forced the pace early, and demolished all who went with him, including Kimani. This year he was again clear of most of the field by two miles, but as part of a pack of four. Torres and Cragg made the pace, with Cheboiywo half a step back and Kimani dogging their heels.

Further back, Cragg's teammate Daniel Lincoln and Dartmouth's Tom McArdle worked together to get clear of the crowds and keep the leaders from vanishing behind the artificial walls created by hordes of spectators around the course. Behind them came the team race: Louie Luchini, Don Sage, Grant Robison and Ian Dobson of Stanford led the main pack like locomotives on a long freight train.

Since their last NCAA cross country win, Stanford has time and again scored large successes in the recruiting arena, but has suffered under the suggestion that much of that talent is then wasted, crushed in the simple effort of trying to make the top seven in what is arguably the most loaded distance corps in the NCAA. "Stanford has seven guys who could win the NCAA team race," one wag said. "The question is, which seven?" After falling just short of a title in 2001, Vin Lananna went out of his way in 2002 to point out how everyone is a part of the Stanford team. "Twenty-nine guys ran 28 minutes at 10:15 a.m. Pacific time today in Palo Alto," he said, "and finished on the track with 600m as hard as they could. They know they're a part of this. We knew we needed three things to win this... And one of them was to put aside the individual and race for the team."

For once, it looked like Stanford's get-position-early strategy was working. Their leaders controlled the pack; all that was left was chasing down the ones that got away.

And there were people to chase. Around four miles in, Torres said, "I knew that Boaz and Kimani were struggling." He and Cragg pushed the pace, "Tightening the screws," Torres said, and Cheboiywo, the wounded lion, was the first to fall back. Kimani hung on longer, but clearly he was struggling. By five miles, it was Cragg and Torres again. The last time this pair met in a sprint, in the indoor 5,000m, it was South African-born Cragg who got the jump on Torres, and Cragg suggested later that he expected he could do it again. But somehow, when the course turned on to the final straight and the pair could see the finish, it was Torres who began to pull away. He managed to collect a lead of nearly ten meters before crossing the line, checking the time, and raising his arms in celebration once safely across the finish line. The time, 29:04.7, was a new course record by 48 seconds, eclipsing Cheboiywo's time from the 2001 Great Lakes Regional. "It's a beautiful day for cross country. I'm speechless. I'm glad to be able to say I'm a champion," said Torres.

Torres is the first American-born winner of the men's race since Adam Goucher, also a Buffalo, won in 1998. That was also the year Torres won the Foot Locker Nationals, a title Goucher also won before starting his career at Colorado. "I thought when Adam finished, I could stop going to press conferences," said Colorado coach Mark Wetmore. "Then Jorge came, and I thought, here we go again."

Cragg came in at 29:06.0. Behind him was Robison, who with Luchini, Sage and Mark Tucker of Butler (5th, 6th, and 4th respectively) had picked off the leaders one by one as they fell back. Cheboiywo managed to out-kick McArdle for seventh, then Dobson gave Stanford their fourth top-ten finish in ninth. Torres' twin brother Edwardo rounded out the top ten for Colorado, and Kimani was eleventh.

Adam Tenforde wrapped up the scoring for Stanford in 29th, leaving them with a staggering 47 points and a sixty-point margin of victory over runners-up Wisconsin.

"I think this is a better combined team performance [men and women] than in 1996 [when both teams won]," said Lananna. "I'm a process guy, not all about winning. Today, we all went through the process well."