Leap Year

Jesse Williams’ leap year is off to a golden start.

But Jenn Suhr can make no such statement.

On paper, these high-flyers are two of Uncle Sam’s leading candidates for gold medals at this summer’s London Olympic Games.

After all, they were ranked number one in the world in their specialties in 2011, thus making them winter-book favorites to win it all in London.

They met with distinctly divergent fortunes at Saturday night’s inaugural edition of the U.S. Open Meet at Madison Square Garden.

Williams, the North Carolina-reared, California-schooled, Kansas and Oregon-trained high jump star, cleared 7 feet, 6 inches (2.29 meters)  to clinch the U.S. Open HJ crown.

With just three other jumpers in the field, the 28-year-old Williams easily outclassed domestic rivals Dusty Jonas (7-4 1/2) and Jaime Nieto and Jim Dilling (7-2 1/2 each).

"I know there's a target on my back now," said Williams. "Every other jumper in the world is aiming for me. I guess that's part of the territory, when you win at the World Championships."

Clearing 7-6 in his first meet of 2012 was one more confidence-builder for the man who has been ranked number one in America for five straight years, ever since 2007.

A year ago, the best Williams could manage in his opener was 7-3. He marked his 28th birthday two days after Christmas 2011 and a month after being crowned America's male track and field athlete of the year for '11.

As such, he was presented the Jesse Owens Award, in the process becoming the first Jesse to win "the Jesse."

He called winning at the Garden — where no men's HJ event had been held in years — an "awesome" experience.

And now it's onward — and surely upward — for the man who hopes to bring the Olympic HJ title back to the USA for the first time since Charles Austin did it at Atlanta in 1996.

But not very long after Williams's victory, New York Stater Suhr, out of Fredonia High School and Roberts Wesleyan College, was coming to grief in the women’s pole vault, missing all three cracks at her opening height of 14 feet, 10 inches (4.52 meters), normally a breeze for her.

Suhr, who'll mark her 30th birthday on Feb. 5, seemed to have plenty of altitude each time, but she never could get her timing straight as the bar plunked down on every attempt and she no-heighted.

So that opened the door to Jillian Schwartz.

As Suhr flubbed her attempts at 14-10, Schwartz squirmed over on second attempt and then had the bar raised to 15-1 3/4 (4.62 meters.)

All this on new poles.

She failed to clear 15-1 3/4 but made the point that she's going to be a big-time factor in the event. With emphasis.

"It was my first meet of the year and a good one," she said. "I started jumping really late in training and didn't really have any expectations coming in to the meet."

Back in 2004, the Duke University graduate, out of Lake Forest High School in Illinois, qualified for the USA Team bound for the Athens Olympics but was unable to get out of the qualifying round in the Games.

After failing to make the 2008 USA Beijing-bound team — placing a disappointed fourth at the Trials — Schwartz switched National teams and signed on to Israel’s national squad in 2009. (And served a stint as volunteer PV coach at Columbia University along the way).

Israel has never had an Olympic medalist in track and field — athough Israeli Olympians have earned three medals in judo, three in sailing and one in canoeing.

For a while, it seemed like another pole vaulter, Alex Averbukh, was destined to earn Israel’s first Olympic medal in track.

He took the gold medal at the 2002 European Championships in  one of the most dramatic settings the sport has ever seen.

Averbukh traveled to Munich — where Adolf Hitler’s rise to infamy began — and won the PV for Israel in the closing event of those '02 Europeans.

(Politics, ironically, rules in another way. Barred from the Asian Games — by the politics of the region, Asian nation Israel is instead invited into the European Championships).

Averbukh repeated as European PV champion at Goteborg in 2006 but never did get to the Olympic podium, never able to equal his '02 and '06 feats at the Olympics.

Thus, the new question: Does Schwartz have London medal potential?

One bottom-line response: "Why not?"

With Russian world record-holder Yelena Iisinbaeva in a slump, Brazilian star Fabiana Maurer (winner at the last big women's PV at the Garden, the 2011 Millrose Games) inconsistent, and America's best, Suhr, sometimes beatable, the window of opportunity is surely there.

NOTES:

Other U.S. Open winners, besides Williams and Schwartz, who are scheduled to compete at the Millrose Games at The Armory on Feb. 11 were Terrence Trammell beating David Oliver in the 50m hurdles (6.45 to 6.50) and both high school mile champions — Samantha Nadel of North Shore and Zavon Watkins of Liverpool.

Nadel, who will be heading to Georgetown, ran alone to a terrific 4:47.66 victory on Saturday and looks like a favorite to repeat at Millrose. Watkins, who will be a Penn State Nittany Lion in the final, took control in the final quarter to win in 4:19.86.

Another winner was Brenda Martinez, who cruised to a 4:34.62 win in the elite mile. She had pulled off another victory at the New Balance Games at The Armory last weekend. She is not scheduled to run at Millrose though.

In a cat-and-mouse final quarter in the men's elite mile, Kenya's Silas Kiplagat got the better of Bernard Lagat, though neither was able to run sub-four on the tight track. Lagat will lead a stellar field in the men's 5,000m at Millrose.