By David Weinberg
Six one-hundredths of a second.
A blink of an eye, a snap of the fingers, a sneeze.
That’s all that prevented Pleasantville High School graduate Nia Ali from earning a spot on the United States Olympic Track and Field team Sunday night.
Ali, a 35-year-old mother of three, ran the 100-meter hurdles in a blistering 12.37 seconds at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.
That’s incredibly fast. Yet, it wasn’t quite fast enough to merit a trip to Paris next month.
Masai Russell won the race, setting a U.S. Olympic Trials record at 12.25 seconds. Alaysha Johnson and Grace Stark were both timed in 12.31. Ali crossed the line a tiny fraction of a second later.
The top three finishers in the event made the Olympic Team. Ali finished fourth.
“4th …” Ali wrote on the Twitter X platform after the race. “Damn.”
Ali was attempting to make the Olympic team for the second time in her career after earning the bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. The 2006 Pleasantville grad followed that by winning gold at the World Championships in Qatar in 2019.
Amazingly, she won the bronze medal in 2016 just 15 months after giving birth to her oldest son, Titus.
She had her second child, a daughter, in 2018 and skipped the 2021 Olympic Trials to have her third child before resuming her track career last year.
Her experience showed in this week’s Olympic Trials.
Because of scratches, all 27 competitors in Friday’s heats automatically advanced to Saturday’s semifinals. Realizing this, Ali shrewdly jogged through her first race in 20.38 seconds.
“This is what happens when you’re a veteran and you’re 35, and (you know) everybody’s going through (to the next round),” NBC commentator Ato Bolden said. “’Why am I bothering to expend any energy in the first run?’ That was a brilliant move. Nia Ali showing the kids what they should have done.”
Ali was once one of those kids. She grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia before moving to Pleasantville for her senior year of high school.
After competing for the Greyhounds, she was a standout in the heptathlon and hurdles for the University of Tennessee and University of Southern California before concentrating on the hurdles at the Olympic level.
In the last few years, she’s balanced training and competing with being a mom and wife and has maintained her status as one of the world’s best hurdlers.
She proved she’s still an elite hurdler on Sunday, running the third-fastest time of her career.
Unfortunately, she came up one six-hundredths of a second short.
Boxing set to return
to Tropicana
Local promoter Larry Goldberg of Boxing Insider Promotions is scheduled to hold his second show at Tropicana Atlantic City on July 26.
Atlantic City middleweight Justin Figueroa (9-0, 7 KOs) and Smithville heavyweight Bruce Seldon Jr. (1-0, 1 KO) are expected to be on the card.
Figueroa, a Holy Spirit High School graduate and former Atlantic City lifeguard, is coming off a fourth-round TKO over Antoni Armas at Tropicana on May 11. Seldon, an Absegami High School grad, registered a first-round knockout over Vineland’s Terrick Maven in his pro debut at Bally’s on June 15.
“It was a great feeling to get that first fight under my belt,” Seldon said. “I was nervous at first, absolutely. It was my first time fighting in front of my friends and family. Now I just want to take this as far as I can go.”
Seldon is trained by Pleasantville’s Julio Sanchez, a retired member of the Pleasantville Fire Departent who restarted the boxing program at the Pleasantville Rec Center.
He’s quickly gaining a solid reputation as a trainer. Seldon is one of his most promising prospects.
“I give Bruce an A-plus for that fight,” Sanchez said. “I was a little worried that he might get too excited and that I would have to calm him down, but he was focused the whole time and did exactly what I asked him to do.”
