Everything was set up for Emmanuel Korir to begin his UTEP track career in fine fashion.
Most of all, the freshman from Iten, Kenya is a special talent, who came to the Miners with a personal best in the 800 meters of 1 minutes, 46.8 seconds despite mostly running the 400 in high school.
He was on Vanderbilt's fast track last week for his opener, with a good field and with an entire semester of transition time in America as he acclimated to the trip across an ocean by running cross country in the fall.
If anyone was prepared to do well the first time in his entire life he had seen an indoor track facility, the first time to run on wood with banked turns, one of the few times he's run a competitive 800 race, it was Korir.