Original Article: Daily News
Peninsula track club boasts the likes of White, Jacobs, Gaines
BY FRED BAER
PARIS, France - Burlingame may be the fastest place on earth. Its ZMA track club has produced the fastest women - and some quick men.
They include Kelli White of Union City, the new women's 100 meter world champion, No. 2 rated Chyrste Gaines out of Stanford, and European men's 100 meter champion Dwain Chambers, representing Great Britain. He has lived in Millbrae during the winter and early spring the past two years. Chambers missed winning the world title this week by a hundredth of a second.
The Peninsula also has some of the USA's top middle distance runners, jumpers, and throwers, who are competing at the world championships in Paris. In the latter group, Stanford graduate Regina Jacobs easily advanced from yesterday's first round in the women's 1,500 meters with the third best time, 4 minutes, 8.12 seconds.
White won the world 100 title Sunday in a 2003 season-leading 10.85 and made history yesterday by winning the 200. Her ZMA teammate Gaines, a 1992 Stanford grad, was the previous world co-leader at 10.89, which she ran at Zurich on August 15. Gaines peaked too late to make the U.S. individual line-up here. Those spots were determined at the USA championships at Stanford in June. White won both sprints at Stanford. Gaines had muscle cramps in the 100 semis at the nationals. She finished fifth in the finals to stay in the relay pool for Paris.
An Olympic relay gold medalist, Gaines is expected to be part of the American 4x100 meter relay team this weekend. She is the USA's most experienced relay runner and has three previous world championship gold medals, plus gold and bronze on Olympic teams.
Chambers was a slight favorite in the men's 100 here and was the fastest semifinal winner, in 10.06. But he lost in a blanket final that had a surprise victor, Kim Collins of St. Kits, who ran 10.07. The next three men all clocked 10.08. Chambers was placed fourth after computer timing analysis. World record holder Tim Montgomery (who has also utilized Balco's labs in the past) was the top USA finisher, fifth in 10.11.
The ZMA athletes work with nutritionist Victor Conte of Burlingame's Balco Laboratories. The sprinters train on the Chabot College track in Hayward, where they are coached by Remy Korchemy, a former national coach in the USSR (from the Ukraine). He started working with local athletes at Stanford in 1983 after being invited there by former Cardinal coach Brooks Johnson.
