NEW YORK (AP) – Even when Laura O’Neill has a chance to cheer on her identical twin sister Kate, she’s usually too nervous to watch.

Take the Heptagonal Conference indoor meet in 2003. It was their senior year at Yale, and Kate was running in the mile. Instead of watching, Laura hid in the bathroom and relied on teammates to give her updates.

“I missed the whole thing,” Laura said. “I got really nervous. I guess when you’re the one racing you feel like you’re in control.”

Laura could be hiding again come later this summer.

Kate enters next week’s U.S. Olympic track and field trials with a good shot at qualifying for the Athens Games in the 10,000 meters. Laura’s chances, however, are much slimmer.

“It would just be a great experience for our whole family,” Kate said during a recent stop in New York for the NY Mini 10-kilometer road race. “It would be a little hard, but it would just be so exciting.”

For now, both hope to make the team together, as they do everything else. They train together with their coach at Yale, Mark Young. They work in the same department in the university’s development office. And they live together in New Haven, Conn.

But they aren’t the only twins hoping for twin Olympic berths. In the upcoming trials, twin brothers Jorge and Ed Torres will try to make the Olympics in different events. Jorge qualified for the 5,000, while Ed has a provisional time in the 10,000. Kristina and Kamille Bratton also have provisionals in the 800, and John and Sean Jefferson have provisionals in the 1,500.

Provisional qualifiers are only guaranteed a spot in the trials if there aren’t enough complete qualifiers to fill out the field size.

At the Sydney Olympics, twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison won gold on the 1,600-meter relay team. Whether they make it to Athens is up in the air: Alvin is being investigated by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for possible drug use.

What makes the O’Neills stand out is their sudden emergence in women’s distance running, just one year out of college. The soon-to-be 24-year-olds have improved their times significantly in 12 months: Kate has shaved more than a minute off her personal best, while Laura has trimmed 25 seconds.

“Kate’s been having a great year,” said Jen Rhines, who made the Olympics in the marathon. “She’s a tough competitor. This is just her first year out of college and for a lot of kids it’s an adjustment year, but she’s come out and run some great times and is one of the favorites to make the 10,000-meter Olympic team.”

The sisters started running as freshmen in high school. They were swimmers growing up, but their high school didn’t have a swim program so they tried cross country and stuck with it.

Laura, the oldest sister by two minutes, decided she wanted to go to Yale because of the academics and the track team. Kate picked the Ivy League school, too. Though they spent their entire lives together, they decided to live separately in college.

“We weren’t very far apart,” Laura said. “We still saw each other a lot, but it was nice to sort of establish our own identity a little bit more. It wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be, either. We weren’t too far apart.”

They did see each other at practice and meets, and soon their improvements impressed Young. By the time their collegiate careers ended, Kate established school records for every distance event – the 3,000 indoors and outdoors, the 5,000 indoors and outdoors, and the 10,000.

At their final NCAA championship, Kate finished second in the 10,000, while Laura was fourth.

“I never expected this,” Kate said. “When I entered college I didn’t think I would be able to run competitively after college. Each year, you just improve a little bit and make goals along the way.”

By the time college ended, Young had no problem telling the O’Neills apart. In the beginning, it was a challenge for him. He already had another set of twins on his track team, Alexandra and Nadia Sawicki.

“It took me a couple of years to sort it out,” Young confessed.

Though they look the same and talk the same, they have distinct running styles. Young said Laura runs back on her heels more, while Kate leans forward and has a side-to-side armswing.

While Young can easily distinguish between their running, it is much harder for him to figure out why Kate has progressed at a much faster rate. Kate has the best time in the 10,000 this year, running in 31 minutes, 34.37 seconds at a meet in Stanford – which also was the sixth-fastest American time ever.

That gives her an improvement of more than one minute since setting the school 10,000 record last year in 32:47.07. In the NY Mini race in June, she finished second behind Olympian Deena Kastor, while Laura was sixth, more than a minute slower than her sister.

“It isn’t that Laura hasn’t improved,” Young said. “If it was anyone else, because you don’t have to compare her to her sister, who is doing the same workouts, she is making good progress. What’s the difference: I can’t tell you.”

The funny thing is, Young wasn’t sure how far the sisters would go. After they graduated, they decided to give running a shot for a year to see how much they could improve.

Now it seems they could have a long-term future in the sport, especially if an Olympic berth is secured – for Kate or both.

“It would just be exciting for either of us to go,” Laura said. “We would certainly want to go watch.”

Would Laura even be able to look?

AP-ES-07-01-04 1458EDT