BEIJING — Christian Cantwell has been waiting four years for this - well, longer than that, really. Since his days at Missouri, he's known he was good enough to win the Olympic shot put gold medal.
He was good in enough in 2004, but missed the Athens Games. But now, the big competition is finally upon him.
He will go through qualifying, which should be a formality, on Friday morning (Thursday night in the United States) and then the final begins at 9 Friday evening at National Stadium.
The timing will be perfect - it's just when he most likes to compete.
"Late evening, 93-95 degrees, probably," he said. "That's enough to get you loosened up, you know. For me the heat's good. It keeps the body limber."
The Bird's Nest, last the center of focus for the opening ceremonies, now readies for the start of the track and field competition. Here in Beijing, you could call it the "Triangle of Gold" as the Bird's Nest (track), Water Cube (swimming/diving) and National Indoor Stadium (gymnastics) all sit across the street from each other.
Qualifying in the men's 100 meters also begins Friday, and Kansas City's Muna Lee will start her quest in the women's 100 on Saturday. The men's 100 final will be that day, with the women on Sunday.
Tyson Gay, who suffered a cramp at the U.S. Olympic trials that kept him from qualifying in the 200, will be strictly a 100 runner here. Walter Dix and Lee are the only two American athletes who qualified in both the 100 and 200 meters, a reflection of how deep those events are in the United States and the difficulty of running all the races necessary to make it in both.
"The qualifying at the Olympics probably won't be as hard as trials," Lee said, reflecting a sentiment commonly heard by U.S. sprinters, whose top competition mostly comes from other Americans.
Lee's coach, Vince Anderson, agrees that as long as Lee is healthy, she should be able to advance ... but once the final arrives, the field will be intense.
"It will be as competitive as in the U.S. trials," referring to the fact that top sprinters like Allyson Felix and Marshevet Hooker just missed making the U.S. 100 team but could have been contenders here if they had. "Muna is not going to see anything harder than she already has."
The top rival for the American sprinters is Jamaica, led by 100 world record-holder Usain Bolt on the men's side and Kerron Stewart and Veronica Campbell-Brown for the women.
Nickesha Anderson, who will be a junior at Kansas this fall, is part of the Jamaican women's 4x100 relay team.
Lee is expected to run in that relay team, too, making this a particularly busy Olympic meet for her. In Athens four years ago, she ran in just the 200 and finished seventh. Lee said she feels like now she's kind of "re-learning" the 200 in working with Anderson in Texas. But it's not like he has overhauled that race for her.
"I think that you try to be as normal as possible, and you don't try to overdo it with technical adjustments," he said. "We keep talking about the same technical adjustments as all year.
"Otherwise, it would be like going into the Super Bowl and installing a new offense. What we've done to get ready is more about rehearsing the plan, resting, and just regenerating psychologically and physically after the trials."