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The Badger Herald

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Individual national title run bittersweet for UW’s Bairu

[media-credit name=’UW Athletic Communications’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′]bairu2_400[/media-credit]In the sport of cross-country, winning isn’t always a victory, and losing isn’t necessarily always a defeat. Such can be said for the Wisconsin men’s team, who entered the Nov. 22 NCAA championships having held the nation’s No. 1 ranking from the start of the season: The Badgers landed an individual national champion in Simon Bairu, but lost the team title to Colorado by just four points — one of the smallest margins in the history of the race.

Nationals offered a mixed bag for Bairu, who was thrilled to take home just the third individual title in UW cross-country history, but couldn’t help but feel a tinge of bittersweet with a third-straight second-place finish for his team.

“Obviously going into the race, the individual title is very important to me, but my No. 1 priority — and the rest of my teammates’ priority — was to win that that team title,” Bairu said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get it done; but I don’t think that it should overshadow what we were able to accomplish this year.”

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In fact, it was a dream season for Wisconsin cross-country. The Badgers took home their sixth-consecutive Big Ten title by sweeping the top three places in the conference championship. Bairu was kicked by teammates Chris Solinsky and Matt Tegenkamp to take the No. 1 spot and his second-consecutive Big Ten Athlete of the Year award.

The team also took top honors in the Jim Drews and Roy Griak Invitationals, as well as in the Great Lakes Regional. With what had been such a dominating season for the team, Bairu’s national championship couldn’t have been possible if not for the benefits of running with such great teammates on a day-to-day basis.

“We’ve got three of four guys who can substitute each other in any race,” Bairu said. “This team is just so unbelievable. The strength in the team, the depth in the team — that any one of those guys could have taken my spot. My victory is more of a product of this program than it is of an individual, the way I look at it.”

At nationals, Bairu ran with the lead pack for the entire race. With about 2,000 meters to go, Bairu, Josaphat Boit of Arkansas and Matt Gonzales of New Mexico broke away. The trio ran together for a couple hundred meters, with Bairu and Boit eventually pulling ahead of Gonzales. Entering the final turn Bairu was just a few steps behind Boit.

“I decided that I would make one strong move with about a K to go,” Bairu said. “I wanted to make sure that, once I made my move, it was going to be strong enough where they couldn’t come with me. And that’s pretty much what I did … I just stuck with them as long as I could and once I sensed that (Boit was) starting to get a little tired, I decided to put it on the line and go for the victory.”

On the last 800-meter straightaway, Bairu sprinted past Boit and, with 50 meters to go, he looked back at Boit and began pumping his fist in victory. Bairu finished the race in 30:28.

“It’s a dream come true for me,” Bairu said. “This was one of my main goals when I first came here. I knew that this was going to be the right program for me. I knew these were the right guys to train with for me to accomplish this goal. Now that I’ve accomplished it, I still can’t believe that I’ve done it. (I’m) just going to have to come back and do it again.”

UW head coach Jerry Schumacher — whom Bairu believes was the only person other than himself who believed he was capable of taking the individual title — said he saw his star runner execute his race plan to perfection and show a lot of character gutting out a victory on the final stretch.

But while Schumacher was happy to see his runner bring home top honors, a third-straight second-place team finish — and by just four points — left the coach in an all-too-familiar position.

“I’d much rather lose by one point than four points or four points [than] 20 points,” Schumacher said. “It’s harder to take, but I’d rather be in that position.”

To put the race’s competitiveness into perspective: To make up the four-point difference, each of the Badger runners would have needed to finish half a second better — a very small margin for five qualifiers covering 10,000 meters and running for 32 minutes.

But Schumacher isn’t too distraught over his team’s consistent second-place showing. After all, finishing No. 2 overall is still a very fine accomplishment. Schumacher certainly would like to win a national title, but he isn’t the least bit dismayed about his program’s consistent spot on the cusp of the sport.

“When I originally started, my goal was to kind of see Wisconsin become what Duke basketball is,” Schumacher said. “I think Duke basketball always wants to be in the final four and they know if they can be in the final four, that they’re going to win it — that they’re two games away from being national champions. So, the more times we put ourselves in the position of being a final four team, we’re going to win, and we’ll win it one of these times. You know, we’ve been consistently second each of these last three years, and that’s a tough pill to swallow a little bit. But we’re going to stick to what we’re trying to accomplish, and maybe one of these times we will get it.”

And after only given one day to celebrate his individual title, Bairu is preparing for what will be a competitive indoor track and field season, where the Badgers are once again aiming for a podium spot at the end of the year.

“Right now, I’m obviously on a high for the success I’ve had as an individual,” Bairu said. “But when the team knows that we never accomplished the goal we set out, it just makes us hungrier, and we’ll be ready come indoor season.”

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