By Kylee O’Connor
After two uncharacteristic losses at Hayward Field this season, which led to lingering questions of unknown injuries, Edward Cheserek said that he was 90 percent as he won the 10,000 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships on Wednesday.
The Oregon junior won in a time of 29 minutes, 9.57 seconds, about 40 seconds off of his personal best time of 28:30.18, which he ran at this meet as a freshman. It was still a little over a second ahead of second-place finisher Futsum Zienasellassie of Northern Arizona.
This is Cheserek’s third-straight NCAA 10,000-meter title and his 14th NCAA title overall in track and cross-country. The win pushed the Oregon men into the lead for the team race. Oregon has 19 points, 10 from Cheserek’s victory, and Arkansas is not far behind with 16.
Cheserek stayed toward the front of the pack throughout the entire race and waited to kick until the opportunity presented itself with 400 to go. Cheserek ran his final lap around 57 seconds. When asked how long he was willing to wait to kick, he responded with “as long as I can.”
Since Cheserek still has the 5,000 meters to run on Saturday, he wanted to save all the energy he could. “There’s no need to kill it when I still have another race,” he said.
Cheserek said that the race did start out a bit slow, but he was prepared for anything. “If it was fast or slow, I was ready to go,” he said.
Oregon head coach Robert Johnson said Cheserek “looked solid.” He and Cheserek both said the chance to run and win in front of the home crowd helped overcome the earlier struggles.
“It’s amazing, man,” Cheserek said. “Hayward Field is so much energy. Even though you’re not feeling good, when you step on the track you feel amazing and ready to race.”
Johnson added, “Eugene’s a special place, and he’s done this before. It’s always sweet to do it at home, especially dealing with some of the adversity that he had.”
Throughout the season, there were many unknowns for the 14-time NCAA champion. After losing two races throughout the spring—something very uncharacteristic for Cheserek—many were unsure if he could produce the same high-caliber performances of his past. His Pac-12 10,000-meter win, in a time of 28:58.57, as well as a solid performance in both the 5,000 and 10,000 at the NCAA West Regional, silenced many of the unsure fans.
“If you look at his body of work there at the Pac-12s and the regionals,” Johnson said, “he ran some really—not really impressive times—the way he ran was impressive, so we were encouraged by that.”
Now that Cheserek has this 10,000 win under his belt he can focus solely on the 5,000 meters on Saturday, where he hopes to add another much-needed 10 points for his team. The defending champions are not favored to win this time, and for the Ducks to have a chance to win the team title, they must do “what we did to get here,” as Johnson put it, and more.
