FOUR-TIME Southeast Asian Games men’s 400-meter hurdles champion Eric Shaun Cray tries to cram 10 meets in a span of 49 days when he resumes his Olympic qualifying campaign, kicking off with the Bryan Clay Invitational, this Saturday (Sunday in Manila) in Azusa, California.
Based in Austin, Texas, Cray, 32, has been inactive for more than a year since retaining his hurdles title on top of another mint in the 4×100-meter mixed relay during the 30th Southeast Asian Games at the New Clark City Athletic Stadium in Capas, Tarlac in December 2019.
He is bidding to meet the Olympic qualifying mark of 48.90 seconds as he tries to make his second straight stint in the global sports festival since making his debut in the Rio de Janeiro Games five years ago.
A gold medalist in the 2017 Asian championships in the 400 hurdles, the Fil-Aim’s national record for the event is 48.98 seconds, booking it at the Meeting de Atlesimo Madrid in 2016 in Madrid, Spain. He clocked 50.21 seconds in ruling the race in the 31st SEA Games.
“Cray’s competition is a bit crammed,” noted former Philippine Sports Commission statistician turned athletic coach Andrew Pyrie, who runs the pinoyathletics.info website, of the athlete’s competition schedule provided by the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association.
After the Bryan Clay Invitational, Cray’s next competition is the Don Kirby Tailwind Open on April 22 at the University of New Mexico Track Stadium in Albuquerque, New Mexico followed by the Drake Relays two days later in Des Moines, Iowa.
He returns to Texas on April 30 to see action in a Texas Tech University meet in Lubbock then takes a break for nine days before plunging into a hectic sked of five competitions in various locations in four weeks.
Cray heads back to the West Coast to compete in the Mt. Sac Relays, where sprint legend Lydia de Vega once took part, on May 9, inside the Mt. San Antonio College campus in Walnut, California before joining the newly-formed Pro Track Series opening with the Los Angeles leg on May 14 to 15.
He will be back in Texas for the USA Track & Field Open at the Athletic Performance Ranch in Fort Worth on May 18 then heads southeast for the Prairie View USATF Invitational inside the Prairie View A&M University campus oval on May 25.
