RIVER FALLS, WI – Chiefs fans got to see little glimpses of it last Thursday in the team’s pre-season opener against Chicago.

“It” would be rookie running back Jamaal Charles’s speed.

To say he’s fleet of foot, would be an understatement. Not so long ago, Charles had world class speed, the kind that will be on display for the next several weeks during the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

There are a lot of great athletes taking part in training camp here in the northwoods. But because they’ve focused their talents on football for many years, few found the time and energy to continue to develop their other athletic abilities, especially in the world of track and field.

The best example is Charles. What he did during his brief track career at the University of Texas could have had him competing for a spot on the United States Olympic track team. In the spring of 2006 as a freshman at the University of Texas, Charles posted Olympic qualifying times in both the 100 meters and 200 meters. This came after he spent the entire summer and fall preparing to play on the Longhorns football team.

Now there is a big difference between posting qualifying times and being consistent enough to actually make the U.S. Olympic team. But Charles would have had the chance to make that journey had his focus been on track and not on football. But coming out of Port Arthur, Texas, Charles went to Austin first and foremost to play for Mack Brown and the football Longhorns. It just so happened he was pretty darn fast on the track as well.

In his freshman football season (2005), Charles played in 13 games for Texas and ran for 878 yards and 11 touchdowns. That winter and then in the spring, he was part of the Longhorns track team, running both indoors and outdoors. He was fourth in the 60-meter dash at the NCAA Indoor Championships in March. Running outside in May, Charles won the Big 12 Conference 100-meter title, and at the NCAA meet he finished fifth in the 100 meters and seventh in the 200 meters.

Charles’ personal best time in the 100 meters was a wind-aided 10.13 seconds that he ran in an NCAA regional in the spring of ‘06. He had a legal time in the 100 of 10.18 seconds.

This year’s qualifying standards for appearing in the Olympics in the 100 meters was 10.21 and 10.28 seconds.

His personal best time in the 200 meters was 20.62 seconds. He ran that on April 22, 2006 in Austin. The U.S. qualifying standards for the 200 were 20.59 and 20.75 seconds.

All those performances came in the spring of 2006 as a freshman. Charles ran with the Longhorns again in the spring of 2007, but decided to concentrate on football. He did not get back to the track this past spring because he decided to enter the NFL Draft early.

“My freshman year I was thinking about track and the Olympics,” Charles said. “But it came down to do I want to focus on track, or do I want to play football. I really couldn’t achieve at a high level in both, because they are two very different things to prepare for.

“But I know some of the guys I was competing against back in college are on the Olympic team now.”

One of the competitors was Walter Dix, who was at Florida State. Dix has multiple NCAA titles in the 100 meters (2x) and 200 meters (3x) and will compete in both events in Beijing. He’s just 22 years old, the youngest sprinter on the American team. Charles ran against Dix in the 2006 NCAA finals.

“Track and football don’t go together at all,” Charles said. “You’ve got to get in two different shapes and that’s really hard do to. In football you can’t push things with your legs. You’ve got to be bigger and stronger down there because of the punishment.”

At Memorial High School in Port Arthur, Charles was a star hurdler. He won the Texas 5-A state titles in the 110-meter and 300-meter hurdles. In the spring of 2003 as a 16-year old, Charles won a bronze medal hurdles at the IAAF World Youth Championships held in Canada.

Five years later, Jamaal Charles is an NFL player who will watch the Olympics with great interest.

“I don’t have any second thoughts,” said Charles. “Football was what I wanted to do. Track was fun, but even back to high school it was football where I saw my future.”

That NFL future began against the Bears with modest numbers: four carries for 13 yards, one catch for 12 yards and two kickoff returns for 43 yards.

But it was the speed he flashed that caught everyone’s attention.

“That’s very exciting,” head coach Herm Edwards said. “We can do something with that.”

Read more about Jamaal Charles and other Chiefs with track and field backgrounds on bobgretz.com.