2016 Rio Olympics: Matthew Centrowitz brings 1,500 gold back to U.S.

RIO DE JANEIRO >> Matthew Centrowitz, gold medal around his neck, was still trying to find his bearings at the dizzying height of the top step on the Olympic Stadium medal podium Saturday night when he was approached by Lord Sebastian Coe.

Coe, the president of the track and field’s global governing body and two-time Olympic 1,500-meter champion, was presenting gifts to the medalists as part of the medal ceremony.

As the pair shook hands, Coe smiled and leaned close to Centrowitz.

“Welcome to the club,” Coe said.

Centrowitz, Maryland-born, Oregon-bred, became the first American to join global distance ruing’s most exclusive club in more than a century, wiing the Olympic 1,500 final with a tactical masterpiece on the final night track competition at the Rio Games.

Leading a slow and at times physical race from start to finish, Centrowitz held off defending Olympic champion Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria down the homestretch for a 3 minute, 50.00 second victory and the first U.S. gold medal event since Mel Sheppard won in 1908.

“I don’t think it has sunk in yet,” Centrowitz said an hour later. “Everything leading up to it, during, and after has just been surreal. I’m just humbled, happy to bring gold back to the U.S. Making a bit of history along the way is very humbling.”

Centrowitz wasn’t the only Oregon-based ruer making history in Rio Saturday night. Great Britain’s Mo Farah, Centrowitz’s teammate at the Nike Oregon Project, won the 5,000 in 13:03.30 to join Finland’s Lasse Viren as the only men to sweep the 5,000 and 10,000 titles in two Olympic Games. Paul Chelimo of the U.S. captured the silver, becoming the first American to medal in the event since 1964 when Bob Schul and Oregon’s Bill Dellinger took gold and bronze respectively.

“I think Mo was more excited about my medal than his,” Centrowitz said, laughing.

To put the gap between U.S. 1,500 golds into perspective consider this: the Chicago Cubs have won a World Series since Sheppard’s win.

Centrowitz’s victory also completes a more than 60-year pursuit of the Olympic 1,500 gold by the Men of Oregon, the long line of lemon and green ruers first set on a path to conquer the world by Bill Bowerman, Oregon’s coach and iovator.

Matt Centrowitz, Matthew’s father, was onc of the greatest Ducks to chase Olympic gold. The elder Centrowitz competed in the 1,500 at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal before moving to the 5,000, an event in which he was expected to contend for a medal at the 1980 Games in Moscow were in not for Jimmy Carter’s boycott.

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The younger Centrowitz, an NCAA 1,500 champion at Oregon, has a tattoo across his upper chest — “Like Father Like Son.” Matt Centrowitz, a brash New York City native, said he appreciated the sentiment but his son could have just sent him a greeting card to tell him how he felt.

“Couple of years ago, I wanted a new tattoo,” Matthew Centrowitz said. “I thought it was fitting, I felt my dad was a huge reason for my success, I wouldn’t be here without him, he brought me to the sport, whet my appetite year in and year out, same name, both went to Oregon, school record holder, sociology major, the list goes on,”

Added to that list until Saturday was Olympic disappointment.

The then-21-year-old Centrowitz’s bronze medal at the 2011 World Championships was seen as a major breakthrough for American distance ruing, setting the stage for Galen Rupp’s Olympic 10,000 silver medal behind Farah a year later. Centrowitz followed up with a silver at the 2013 Worlds. But he left London disappointed with his fourth-place finish in the Olympic 1,500 final after missing a key training period in the months leading up to the Games with a knee injury.

After graduating from Oregon, he joined the Oregon Project where he trains with Farah, Rupp, another Oregon NCAA champion, under Alberto Salazar, a college teammate of Centrowitz’s father and himself the former American 10,000 record-holder.

Centrowitz has been living outside the Olympic Village in Rio, sharing an apartment with Rupp. When he woke up from a nap Saturday afternoon an email was waiting for him. It was from Jim Ryun, the former world record-holder in the 1,500 and mile.

“Jim Ryun, who’s been my biggest inspiration, wishing me good luck, saying he and his wife were praying for me,” Centrowitz said.

Ryun had been expected to break the U.S. Olympic 1,500 gold medal drought. But he could not chase down Kenya’s Kip Keino in the thin air of Mexico City and then was tripped and eliminated in a qualifying heat four years later in Munich.

Saturday Centrowitz avoided trouble, getting out early and grabbing the lead. He stayed there through a brutally slow opening 400, 66.83 seconds, and even slower second lap, Centrowitz leading the field past 800 in 2:16.59. And he was still there at the bell.

“At that point, it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m strong right now and fast, I’ve done workouts where I’ve closed somewhere close to 49, 50,’ and without knowing what it was going to take, I just knew that was something I could do,” he said.

Centrowitz held off a brief move by Djibouti’s Ayanieh Souliman and then came off the turn with a gap on the field before Makhloufi burst out of traffic.

“On the home straight, I wasn’t confident,” Centrowitz said. “I was thinking someone was going to come by me on the back stretch. No one did. I was happy to have it going into the last curve and the last homestretch was a long, long (expletive) 100. I was like, ‘Here comes someone. Someone’s gotta come.’

“My legs felt great until the last 20, until it felt like I was buckling a little bit. I was like, ‘Oh, (expletive).’ Come on, man, you’re right there.’”

But he held off Makhloufi by .11 seconds. New Zealand’s Nick Willis claimed the bronze in 3:50.24. World champion and pre-race favorite Asbel Kiprop of Kenya was sixth at 3:50.87.

“As soon as I crossed the line, I literally was looking at the (scoreboard) like, ‘Did somebody go by me?’” Centrowitz said. “‘Did I really just hold that caliber of a field off in an Olympic final?’ I could not script it any better.”

He was still in disbelief as he made his way through his victory lap, the first one by an American miler in more than a century. On the backstretch he spotted his father and sister Lauren in the stands.

“Are you kidding me?!” Matthew yelled.

“Are you (expletive) kidding me?!” Matt shouted back

The son reminded the father of a bet they had. Matt agreed earlier this year to get a tattoo if his son medaled in Rio. The shinier the medal the more control Matthew had in what the tattoo said.

“I’m thinking ‘Like Son Like Father’” the newest member of a golden club said with a smirk.