Michael Johnson was one of the fastest men in American history, a feat established at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Muhammad Ali was possibly the best heavyweight boxer of all time and winner of the gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics. Jesse Owens ran as a symbol of freedom under a tyrant’s watch in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Pole-vaulter Rory Quiller, Binghamton University’s most prominent individual athlete, is getting closer to the grandest in American sports.

Quiller, the runner-up at last year’s NCAA Indoor Championships, is currently qualified to attend the 2008 United States Track and Field Olympic Team Trials in Eugene, Ore., this summer. A top three finish there would send him to Beijing to represent the U.S. at the 2008 Olympics.

Quiller, 23, would be a long way from home and in front of more people than he ever imagined himself to be.

At James I. O’Neill High School in West Point, Quiller never had more than five or 10 teammates on the track and field team. The team was so sparse that Quiller sometimes had to attend meets either alone or with just one other teammate.

But Quiller has been surrounded by the game since he was a youth, though he didn’t start competing until his freshman year of high school. Quiller’s father Jerry has been the head coach for the Army’s track and field team, the Black Knights, for 13 seasons and coached at the University of Colorado before that.

“I was playing around with it even when I was a little kid,” Quiller says. “My dad had a garden and we had these bean poles, you know how string beans grow? Well, we had these bamboo bean poles and me and my brother would dig a hole in our backyard and we’d run down and put the bean pole in the hole and jump over broomsticks.”

In his third year of high school, Quiller grabbed the attention of BU track and field head coach Mike Thompson at a meet in Syracuse.

“I was pretty raw,” Quiller says. “[Coach] thought, ‘that’s the kid I want to invest my time in.’ He recruited me harder than anybody else.”

Landing Quiller at BU has been arguably the most important move the Bearcats have made since joining Division I competition.

Quiller has earned All-American honors twice, an unprecedented feat for a Bearcat, with a chance at a third this spring. He starred in a commercial for BU entitled “The Advantage,” which aired for the first time in January. Though BU’s athletics are not fully funded, Director of Athletics Joel Thirer says that Quiller’s presence could help change that.

Quiller loses his eligibility as a Bearcat after the indoor season concludes in mid-March, but he will still work toward the Olympics with the team. With Quiller’s time dwindling, Thompson recalls how he changed the program.

“Five years ago I used to think for a school like Binghamton to make the national championships would be difficult, but a huge deal,” Thompson says. “[Quiller’s] been there four times — and I still look at it like a big deal — but the excitement has worn off.”

Thompson believes his job now is to get Quiller to the next level and help him reach his Olympic goals, but he also understands how difficult a task that is. The next time around might provide Quiller’s ticket.

“Making the [NCAA] championship is pretty close to making the trials,” Thompson he said. “I’m expecting it to happen, though we’re taking it a day at a time now … [Rory] has still yet to fulfill his full capabilities and making the team in 2012 would be more realistic.”

Still, Quiller doesn’t think making the 2008 Olympics is impossible.

“I would say, if you’re a betting man, I would never bet against me,” he says. “If you’re talking to anybody who knows the sport, I am not one of the heavy favorites to go to the Olympics. I’m just trying to get to the trials … If I hit a good jump, and it’s a decent day and the planets are aligned, then maybe.”