Hennagan on track for individual gold

Hennagan on track for individual gold

While most of the U.S. track and field team trained in Crete, Monique Hennagan came straight to Athens and is living alone in the Olympic Village in a suite that eventually will house 10 athletes.

The 1998 North Carolina graduate would like to finish these Olympics with another place all by herself -- at the top of the women's 400-meter award stand.

Hennagan, 28, picked up a gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Games, but she had to share the stand with her three teammates in the winning 4x400 relay.

After a fourth-place finish at the 2000 U.S. trials, she went to Sydney just hoping to fulfill her relay responsibilities. Now she is aiming to win outright.

"Coming in here, I feel a lot more confident than I did before," she said. "In Sydney, I really didn't have much of a chance. Now I feel like I'm one of the best, and I can compete with the best."

Sports Illustrated picked Hennagan to win a bronze medal here behind Ana Guevara of Mexico and Tonique Williams Darling of the Bahamas.

Hennagan was the first female track athlete to win a national championship at UNC, and she won two in 1996: the NCAA outdoor 800 meters and the NCAA indoor 400.

Coaches told her she'd win more by stepping up to the 800 exclusively, but Hennagan didn't want the type of training that goes with the greater distance.

UNC head track coach Dennis Craddock was one of those who said she had a better future in the 800.

"I'll be the first one to say I made a mistake," Craddock said. "I kept telling her she could be the best 800-meter runner to come out of the USA. That may still be true, but she wanted to be a sprinter."

Instead of switching events, Hennagan changed her approach.

In 2002, she left her native South Carolina, her family and friends and went to the Atlanta area to focus purely on running under coach Pauline Davis Thompson.

The wisdom of that move became clear at the U.S. Olympic trials in July, when she ran a personal best of 49.56 seconds -- her first finish in under 50 seconds -- to win the trials and the U.S. national outdoor championship.

"It was conducive to what I needed to do to take it to another level," Hennagan said of leaving Columbia, S.C., where she trained under former UNC assistant Curtis Frye at the University of South Carolina. "I'm not in that college atmosphere anymore. I'm with a strictly professional coach. She's taken a lot of time with me to go back and correct things."

A devout Christian, Hennagan, who is single, has become involved in her Atlanta church. In the quiet of her empty suite, she is reading "More Than A Carpenter." Faith, she said, "is the number one thing for me."

"I feel like everything that I have, everything that I am comes from the strength that God gives me," she said. "I feel honored to glorify Him in what I do. Without Him, I know it wouldn't be possible."

In Atlanta, Hennagan enjoys the company of fellow Tar Heel Tisha Waller, a 1992 UNC graduate who is here for her second Olympics.

"She's just like a big sister," Hennagan said of Waller. "She's always looking out for you whether you're a Tar Heel or not, but it definitely helps. She has blue blood."

Hennagan is surrounded by Tar Heels on this U.S. team: Waller, sprinter and long jumper Marion Jones, shot putter Laura Gerraughty, 5,000-meter runner Shalane Flanagan, 110-meter hurdler Allen Johnson, 400-meter relay member Crystal Cox and sprinter LaTasha Colander, who was on the winning 4-by-400 team in Sydney and will be Hennagan's roommate in the Olympic Village.

Though more confident in her second Olympics, Hennagan worries that she may have left her best race back in Sacramento in the trials final.

"The difference between U.S. athletes and a lot of our competition is they peak for this time because they don't have to go through a grueling trials like we have," she said. "So you don't know what to expect because they haven't necessarily peaked."

Craddock said the multiple rounds of the Olympics may benefit Hennagan as it takes a toll on runners accustomed to a single race.

"She's really strong," he said.

Hennagan has wanted this opportunity for a long time. Now it's here, and she doesn't know if there will be another.

"Lord willing, I'll come out with the gold," she said, "and that will mean ... I don't even know I can put the words to what that would mean."