Richards faces tough field in AT&T women's 400

INDIANAPOLIS - Imagine sprinting as hard as you can for 200 meters. Now, imagine sprinting another 200 meters, without stopping. Are your arms and legs burning? Do they feel like they weigh about 100 pounds each?

Welcome to the AT&T women's 400 meters at the 2007 AT&T USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships!

Nobody ever chose to run the 400 meters because it's a barrel of laughs. But it is an event filled with pride and history. Nobody is making more history lately than Sanya Richards, the two-time defending U.S. champion in this event. She hasn't done it alone, though. Thanks to an amazing crop of sub-50-second performers, Richards has excellent company in Dee Dee Trotter and Monique Henderson. Look out for the red-hot University of South Carolina's Natasha Hastings, too.

Richards has been the dominant force in the 400 since 2005, when she won her first U.S. title and the overall Visa Championship as the top performer of the Visa Championship Series. In 2006, at the age of 21, Richards had one of the greatest seasons ever by an American 400-meter runner, being named IAAF World Athlete of the Year and USATF's Jesse Owens Award winner as the nation's top track athlete. She ran under 50 seconds nine times during the season, broke the American record (48.70) and ran the five fastest times in the world in 2006. She was undefeated outdoors in the 400 on the year, winning a $249,999 portion of the jackpot for sweeping the Golden League series and also taking the USA Indoor, USA Outdoor, World Athletics Final and World Cup titles. She also won the World Cup 200 title, and she will run the 200 at this meet as well.

However, Richards spent the first several weeks of the 2007 season fighting illness, so an upset in Indy is possible. Trotter is the 2004 NCAA champion, and she went on to place fifth at the Olympic Games. In 2005 she joined the sub-50 club, and she is a two-time USA indoor champion.

Like Richards, Henderson has been a top American athlete since she was a teen-ager. She was the 1999 USA junior champion at the age of 16, and just one year later she was a finalist at the 2000 Olympic Trials, earning an Olympic Team spot as part of the 4x400m relay pool. She teamed with Trotter, Richards and Monique Hennagan to win the 4x400m relay gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games.

Hastings also has been a top American teen and may be the "X Factor" in this race - and the biggest threat to Richards. She was the 2004 World Junior Championships gold medalist and also won the 400 at the 2003 World Youth Championships. Now a college junior, Hastings broke Richards' collegiate record at the 2007 NCAA Indoor Championships with her time of 50.80, and in May she ran a world-leading time of 50.23 to win the NCAA East Regional. She was just getting started, though - at the 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championships last weekend in Sacramento, she ran a 2007 world-leading time of 50.15.

FAST FACTS

World record: 47.60, Marita Koch (East Germany), 1985

American record: 48.70, Sanya Richards, 2006

Meet record: 49.27, Sanya Richards, 2006

Time schedule: 1st round 6:10 p.m. Thursday; semifinals 6:45 p.m. Friday; final 2:36 p.m. Saturday

DID YOU KNOW? ...

* Richards was USATF's 2003 Youth Athlete of the Year and the 2005 Visa Humanitarian Athlete of the Year.

* Trotter won the 2004 NCAA title over a field that included Richards and Henderson.

* Henderson is the 2002 World Junior Champion, with Richards as the silver medalist.

* Jearl Miles-Clark was the last American woman to win a world title in this event, in 1993.

* Under 50 seconds is considered to be a very fast time in this event; at the 2005 AT&T USA Outdoor Championships, three women - Richards, Trotter and Henderson - finished under 50 for the first and only time in history.