Nedeau, who is known simply as Ned by his team, experienced the dark side of running in 1996 during the 1500m U.S. Olympic trials, when he missed qualifying for the Olympics in Atlanta by a slim eight one-hundredths of a second. For the most part, though, his career as a runner has been extremely successful.
Nedeau did not begin running competitively until his sophomore year at Kennebunk High School in Maine. A strong athlete who played several sports in high school, Nedeau picked up running because he found that the one sport he could not master was basketball. "I could not shoot to save my life, so that, and my desire to get in shape for baseball, led me to go out for the indoor track team," he explained. But the winter turned into spring, and instead of playing baseball, Nedeau continued running on the outdoor team in the spring. After one last summer of playing baseball, he realized that he was fast and started running full time.
While Nedeau would eventually achieve the most success in middle-distance events, he ran sprints and hurdles in high school. Although he was successful in these events, he now thinks that he was overconfident of his abilities at the time. "I was good for Maine, but in the bigger scheme of things I wasn't as good as I thought I was," he said.
Nedeau was, however, good enough to earn a scholarship to Northeastern University. There, he tried running the 400m hurdles, but had trouble getting his feet down in time, which forced him to break stride and lose time at the last hurdle. When this problem could not be fixed, Nedeau began running the 800m event. The move turned out to be a good one as he earned All-American honors in both the indoor and outdoor events his sophomore year.
With his success at the distance events, he decided to go to the Olympic trials in 1992. At that meet he finished a surprising seventh. This success convinced him that the Olympics were a real possibility in 1996, but not in the 800. "It was a huge improvement for me to make the finals and finish seventh," he said. "And if I wasn't before, I was completely hooked at that point on the idea of the Olympics. But I didn't feel that I had quite enough speed in the 800, so I started to become a miler."
After finishing his college career as a five-time All-American, Nedeau continued to train for the '96 trials. Unfortunately, a foot injury caused him to lose valuable training time that year. "1996 was a very difficult year for me. I spent six or seven weeks training in a pool due to the foot injury," he said.
As time grew shorter, Nedeau was forced to begin running again despite the fact that the injury had not improved. He raced himself back into shape and made it to the trials, and, despite not being in top running condition, made it to the finals. In the final, "I got lucky because the race didn't go out all that fast. I knew I wasn't in shape to stand up to a real fast race."
Despite his condition, Nedeau still finished just out of third place, which would have given him a spot on the Olympic team. Nedeau admitted that the loss was a tough one to take. "Immediately following, there was a lot of frustration and I almost would have preferred to finish last." Now, however, after looking back, Nedeau has a more positive view on the event. "Looking at it in hindsight, I focus more on what I was able to accomplish, considering that I shouldn't have even been there, and I shouldn't have been in contention," he said.