Shannon Rowbury

Rowbury secured her spot on the world team in a photo finish at the 2011 USA Outdoor Championships. After Christin Wurth-Thomas ran to a blistering lead, she began to fade over the last lap, and Rowbury was able to pass her at the line to secure the third-place spot, edging Wurth-Thomas by one hundredth of a second to finish in 4:06.20...Two-time USA champion and 2008 Olympic Games seventh place finisher Shannon Rowbury posted the best finish by an American in a world outdoor championships women's 1,500-meter final in 10 years at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin. And then it got better. Rowbury was up near the front the entire way in the final and trailed Great Britain's Lisa Dobriskey by a few yards down the final stretch. Although Rowbury couldn't catch her, she finished fourth in 4:04.18. However, during the last lap, race winner Natalia Rodriguez of Spain tripped Ethiopia's Gelete Burka from behind. Following the race Rodriguez was disqualified and Maryam Yusuf Jamal (BRN) was declared the winner (4:03.74). Lisa Dobriskey of Great Britain (4:03.75) was awarded the silver medal, and Rowbury became the bronze medalist. In 2008, Rowbury turned in the top performance ever by an American woman in the Olympic 1,500m final. She ran a smart race from the gun, positioning herself in the top six and out of trouble as the pace came through at 65.90 for 400m and 2:13.70 for 800m. She finished seventh in 4:03.58, the highest placing for an American in the event...Rowbury entered the Olympic Trials as the prohibitive favorite in the women's 1,500 meters, and she delivered in convincing fashion. Strong and swirling winds kept the field packed tightly through the first two laps. Just past 1,000m, Rowbury took off and put on an impressive display of confident running and crossed the finish line in 4:05.48 - a very fast time in unfavorable winds…On May 18, 2008 at the adidas Track Classic, Rowbury won the 1,500 meters in four minutes, 1.06 seconds. It was the fifth-best time in U.S. history and under the Olympic "A" qualifying standard. That effort followed her first competitive 1,500 meters of the outdoor season on May 4 when Rowbury ran a then-personal best 4:07:59 at the Cardinal Invitational in California, almost five seconds faster than her previous top time… Rowbury has been on a gradual rise to global prominence as a middle-distance runner. She won the 800 meters at the 2001 National Scholastic Outdoor Championships while attending Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep School in San Francisco, Calif. At Duke University, she finished second in the mile at the 2005 NCAA indoor championships and won the Atlantic Coast Conference Southeast Region cross-country title that fall. She set her previous personal best in the 1,500 meters in July 2006 following redshirt indoor and outdoor seasons at Duke. In 2007, she won the NCAA Indoor mile title and finished as the runner-up in the 3,000m. A stress fracture in her hip knocked her out of the 2007 outdoor season…enjoys soccer and Irish dancing.