In the middle of the 30th Olympiad in London, United Kingdom, the Stony Brook Seawolves were represented in the 1,500m run by Lucy Van Dalen ’12 of New Zealand. She ran well enough in her opening race on Monday that she advanced to the semifinal round. She fell in that round on Wednesday.
Van Dalen, who won All-America honors six times at Stony Brook, ran a time of 4:07.4 in the first race, taking eighth place in her heat and advancing to the next round.
For the first round, the top six places in each heat along with the six runners who had the best times outside of those sets of six moved on to the semifinal round. Van Dalen’s time was sufficient in allowing her to be part of that group.
Van Dalen was New Zealand’s lone runner in the event. Her nation won 13 medals, three of which were gold in rowing. It has a total of five medals from rowing in these Summer Games thus far.
She had run against three of the remaining 24 athletes in the semifinals: Shannon Rowbury and Jenny Simpson of the United States and Nicole Sifuentes of Canada.
In the semifinal, she ran a time of 4:06.97, only a couple of seconds behind the heat winner. She finished 11th in the heat, which was not good enough to advance to the final round.
Van Dalen owns on her own or is a part of 13 Stony Brook records in indoor and outdoor track, making her one of the most decorated student-athletes in school history.