The 2006 Visa Championship Series will come to its exciting conclusion February 24-26 at the AT&T USA Indoor Track & Field Championships, held at the Reggie Lewis Track & Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College. The Championships will do more than crown national champions, and overall Visa Champions. The meet also is the Team USA selection event for the 2006 World Indoor Track & Field Championships, to be held March 10-12 in Moscow, Russia.

The top two finishers in each event will make the team, provided they have met the IAAF qualifying standards. That means it's make-or-break time for Olympic medalists like Lauryn Williams, Joanna Hayes, Adam Nelson, and Sanya Richards; world champions like Bershawn Jackson, Walter Davis and Tianna Madison; and world record holders like Wallace Spearmon.

Rich history

As the World's #1 Track & Field Team, Team USA has a rich history at World Indoors. First held in 1987 in Indianapolis, the World Indoor Championships are held every two years at different cities around the world.

The inaugural World Indoors was a success for Team USA's men, as they competed at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis - the very building where the USA Track & Field National Office is located. The Americans won 11 medals, including six gold medals. Winners included Hall of Famers Michael Conley and Larry Myricks.

The best medal tallies in the history of the World Indoor Championships are owned by Team USA. In 1993, as the Soviet Bloc crumbled, the Americans won 17 medals. That success has continued to the present. Team USA won 19 medals in 1999 and 17 in 2001 and again in 2003, when Team USA set a record for gold medals, with 10, in Birmingham, England.

Among those 2003 gold medalists was a somewhat star-struck Justin Gatlin, competing in his first Team USA event and traveling to Europe for the first time ever.

Just more than one year later, Gatlin became the Olympic 100-meter champion. Other prominent golds came from Tom Pappas, who would become world decathlon champion, in the heptathlon; long jumper Dwight Phillips, who would become Olympic and World Outdoor Champion; and two-time Olympic sprint gold medalist Gail Devers in the women's 60m hurdles.

Bread-and-butter events

As is the case outdoors, U.S. throwers, hurdlers and sprinters have enjoyed enormous success at the World Indoor Championships. Led by four-time medalist John Godina (gold '01, silver '99 and '03, bronze '97), Team USA has won 12 medals in the men's shot put. Most recently, Christian Cantwell and Reese Hoffa went 1-2 in 2004, continuing the American juggernaut.

The men's 60-meter hurdles also have reaped double-digit hardware, with 11 medals, an astonishing seven of them gold. Allen Johnson has led the way with three titles ('95, '03. '04). Long jumpers have won 10 medals, including gold from Olympic and world champion Dwight Phillips in 2003 and Savante Stringfellow in 2004.

In terms of pure gold, the 60 hurdles leads the way with seven gold. Team USA's men have won five gold, four silver and no bronze medals in the 60-meter dash, while the 400 has seen five Americans atop the medal podium, two for silver and one for bronze.

The 60-meter dash has been by far the dominant event for U.S. women, with 10 medals. All three gold medals in the event have been won by Gail Devers ('93, '97, '04), who also was silver medalist in 1999.

Devers figures prominently in Team USA's #2 women's indoor event as well, the 60-meter hurdles, where she has contributed two medals to the six-medal total - gold in '03 and silver in '04.

The women's 400 meters and 4x400-meter relay also have produced six medals apiece since 1987. Somewhat surprisingly, the 3,000 meters has also been a solid event with five medals. Shayne Culpepper's come-from-behind, bronze-medal performance at the 2004 World Indoor Championships in Budapest, Hungary, was an unexpected boon to the American showing.

Who will be Team USA's next surprising hero? Stay tuned and keep your eyes peeled - you'll likely see them at the 2006 AT&T USA Indoor Track & Field Championships!

For more information on the AT&T USA Indoor Track & Field Championships, including schedule, ticket information and status of entries, visit www.usatf.org/events/ 2006/USAIndoorTFChampionships.

For more information on the Visa Championship Series, visit www.visachampionshipseries.com.