Oregon track & field sends 15 past and present Ducks to Olympics

If you had a basic knowledge of college track & field and someone asked you what school would send the highest number of athletes to the Rio Olympics in the sport, you'd probably guess Oregon. You would be right.

Over the past week and a half at this year’s U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials, 11 athletes who are current or former Ducks earned spots on Team USA. Another four athletes also earned spots competing for their home countries.

Oregon’s 11 athletes on the U.S. track & field team this summer are more than any other school in the country, and almost twice as many as the next closest schools.

The 15 Ducks earning a spot in the Olympics this year is a higher total than the past three Olympics combined. It also marks the 20th straight Olympics where at least one Duck made the team in track & field, a streak that began at the 1932 summer games in Los Angeles.

Here is the full list of athletes with ties to Oregon that earned spots on their Olympic team for this summer:

There were plenty of exciting performances in that list. Deajah Stevens beat Allyson Felix, one of the world’s top sprinters, in the 200. Galen Rupp made the men’s 10,000 meter final his play thing. Matthew Centrowitz broke a 36-year old meet record in the men’s 1,500 final and Devon Allen’s 13.03 in the 110 hurdles would have won him silver in every Olympic final dating back to 1996 and would have won him gold in 1992.

Plenty of those Ducks, including Allen, Centrowitz, Ashton Eaton and Rupp will be favorites to take home a medal from Rio.

The track & field competition begins August 12 with the men’s discus throw and concludes with the men’s marathon on August 21.