BATON ROUGE – Reigning World Championships Bronze Medalist Cassandra Tate and former Tiger Quincy Downing lined up in the finals of the 400-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials, while senior Chanice Chase ran the 100-meter hurdles at the Canadian Athletics Championships on Sunday to conclude Olympic qualifying.
Tate, who won the World Championships bronze medal in the women’s 400 hurdles in Beijing a year ago, came up two places short of qualifying for the 2016 Olympic Games with Team USA as she ran 54.60 seconds on the Hayward Field track for fifth place in the women’s final on Sunday night.
Dalilah Muhammad was the easy winner in the race with her World-leading time of 52.88, while Ashley Spencer (54.02) and Sydney McLaughlin (54.15) rounded out the three Olympic qualifiers in the event.
While Tate missed earning a spot on Team USA by less than a half second, Downing was just over one second away from Olympic qualification himself in the final of the men’s 400-meter hurdles when he finished sixth with a time of 49.60 in his first U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials. Kerron Clement (48.50), Byron Robinson (48.79) and Michael Tinsley (48.82) were Team USA’s Olympic qualifiers in the event.
The 2016 Canadian Championships & Rio Selection Trials also came to an end Sunday in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with Chase lining up in the final of the women’s 100-meter hurdles seeking her second Olympic berth of the weekend. The Lady Tiger senior had already qualified for Canada in the 400 hurdles on Friday when she won the women’s bronze medal as the third-place finisher in the final.
After qualifying for the sprint hurdle final with the sixth-fastest time of the preliminary round at 13.88 (-1.1), Chase placed sixth overall at her national championships when she crossed the finish line in 13.57 (+0.6).
With Olympic qualifying now complete for most countries, LSU Track & Field’s list of Olympians stands at eight as Chase is joined by the likes of Kelly-Ann Baptiste and Richard Thompson from Trinidad & Tobago; Fitzroy Dunkley, Damar Forbes, Natoya Goule and Nickiesha Wilson from Jamaica; and Gabriel Mvumvure from Zimbabwe. Junior sprinter Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake looks to make it a ninth Olympian for the program when the United Kingdom names its Olympic team on Tuesday as he looks to claim at at-large spot in the men’s 200 meters.