NEW YORK -- Former Woodlawn star Joel Brown finished third in the men's 60-meter hurdles at the Millrose Games last night at Madison Square Garden.
"I got out well. I just didn't finish well," Brown said.
Brown, who turned 28 Thursday, led over the first two hurdles but couldn't fight off two of his fellow Olympic prospects, ex-Mississippi star Antwon Hicks and former Howard University runner David Oliver, over the final three barriers.
Hicks finished in 7.53 seconds, the fastest time by an American runner this winter, with Oliver second in 7.59 and Brown at 7.66.
"Technically, I ran a very good race, better than last week," Brown said, referring to when he ran a close second to Hicks in the Reebok Boston Indoor Games. "But I know I still have a lot of work to do.
"I know I've got to get stronger over hurdles 3-4-5 [indoors], then build up to a full flight [of 10] for [the 110-meter high hurdles] outdoors."
He feels he's on target to improve on his career-best performances achieved in 2005 - when he won the USA Track and Field Indoor National Championships title and was sixth in the world outdoor championships final in Helsinki, Finland.
Brown's next race will be in the Tyson Invitational Meet on Feb. 16 in Fayetteville, Ark., and then he will head back to Boston's Reggie Lewis Center for the USATF Indoor Nationals on Feb. 23-24.
But for now he's going back to the training track at the Disney Sports Complex in Orlando, Fla., where he trains under former Olympic coach Brooks Johnson, in the company of other elite hurdlers as Oliver and ex-Indiana State star Aubrey Herring, who was fifth last night at 7.75 seconds.
"It's an ideal training situation for all of us," Brown said. "We don't have to do any traveling to run against some of the world's best. We're all there. We all help each other."
Also last night, Bernard Lagat won his sixth title in the Wanamaker Mile - one short of the record. The Kenyan-born American finished in 3:57.51. Irishman Eamonn Coghlan won seven times, the last in 1987.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.