Chuck Dugue knew what Anna Hall could do before she did.
At the Great Southwest Classic in 2018, Hall’s club coach was with her in Albuquerque as the 17-year-old Valor Christian senior-to-be shattered the high school national record in the heptathlon. After Hall set a personal best in the long jump by nearly a foot, Dugue’s job was done, even with two events remaining.
So the hands-on coach, whose pulse is typically racing during meets, went and sat in the bleachers.
“I walked up into the stands and just sat back and relaxed,” Dugue recalled. “(Anna’s dad) David came up to me and was like, ‘Uh, why aren’t you down on the track cheering and coaching?’ I go, ‘She’s got this, just watch. She doesn’t need me anymore.’”
Hall went on to PR in the javelin and dominated the 800 meters en route to the prep record. And since those high school days, those around Hall have been certain what she’s capable of — even when the track star has been unsure of herself.
That trend’s been evident in Hall’s pro career as she endured two difficult injuries in Olympic years, and wrestled with self-doubt along the way, only to come out the other side as a world champion. With Hall’s gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo last weekend, the 24-year-old became only the second American woman to win a world title in the heptathlon, joining Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
“In my head, the past few years, I kept thinking maybe my body was cooked forever and I was going to be one of those ‘They could’ve been good’ athletes,” Hall admitted. “But people kept speaking life into me all the time — whether I was talking to Jackie, (boyfriend and Giants receiver) Darius (Slayton), my family, my coaches.
“They couldn’t tell me it would be better tomorrow, but they kept telling me it would be better, and I just had to keep going. If I didn’t have people constantly speaking life into me like that, I don’t know if I would’ve ever turned it around.”
At the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials, Hall crashed into a hurdle. That broke the navicular bone in her left foot, forcing her to withdraw from the trials and evaporating her hopes to make the Tokyo Games.
Hall transferred from Georgia to Florida later that year, where she went on to capture NCAA titles in the pentathlon and heptathlon in 2022. In July of ’22, her career continued to take off when she won bronze at the world championships in Eugene, Ore.
But then a left knee injury suffered shortly before the ’23 world championships in Budapest changed Hall’s trajectory. She still took silver at that meet — by an excruciatingly narrow margin of 20 points — but that was the beginning of nagging knee pain.
“She texted me right before Budapest when she hurt her left knee, saying ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” said Hall’s sister, Julia St-Juste. “I told her she could, and she would, but from then on it was clear her knee wasn’t right.”
Hall had surgery in January 2024 to address a cartilage defect in her knee. The procedure took bone marrow from her hip and sprinkled it on the back of her patella. Doctors also poked holes in the back of her patella and adjusted its positioning to reduce the bone-on-bone friction Hall was experiencing, which was causing repeated stress fractures.
After the procedure, Hall only had six months to recover for the U.S. Olympic Trials, which she won.
“She persevered through a lot of misery just to get to where she was able to go to the Olympics,” says Matt DeLancey, the strength and conditioning coach at Florida who is part of Hall’s team. “I don’t think people thought she was going to be the U.S. champ last year coming off surgery like that.”
Hall placed fifth in Paris in a performance she categorized as “a complete and utter failure.”
In every meet of 2024, Hall said she competed on “heavy pain meds” and was also receiving routine PRP injections in her knee. But the pain persisted, leading to a period of what Hall called “athletic hopelessness” that dragged into the early parts of 2025.
“I did not want to do that again, taking meds to manage pain every meet, and then wondering what it’s going to feel like at the meet and the next day,” Hall said.
Hall fell into a deep funk.
She competed at a meet in January, but withdrew from the rest of the indoor season. Self-doubt seeped in. She experienced nightmares that she missed the Olympics because she was stuck on a bus and of running in slow motion on the second lap of the 800 meters.
At one point during a February practice, she burst into tears from the accumulation of pressure and frustration. Her coaches — the Florida staff of Mike Holloway, Mellanee Welty, Nic Petersen and Eric Werskey — were patient, up to a point.
“My coaches were finally like, ‘You really need to work on your attitude,’” Hall said. “They were like, ‘We know you’re not happy right now, but you have to fake it. Something’s got to change.’ So it was like a fake-it-til-you-make-it situation — stopping speaking negatively at practice, stopping complaining.”
Hall returned to competition in the spring, where she found some success in open events at the Miami Slam. Then, in early June, Hall had an “I’m back” moment, posting a career high of 7,032 at the Hypo Meeting at Götzis. That score tied for second on the all-time leaderboard, behind only Joyner-Kersee’s world record of 7,291.
“That was the meet that exposed the fact to me that it really has been my head this entire time, because 7,000 points is something I’ve been chasing my entire career,” Hall said. “To go and accomplish it like that, I had clearly been fine physically for a while.”
At Götzis, Hall was far from perfect, but she worked around her mistakes. Long been dominant in the high jump and 800, Hall also performed well in the shot put, an event that was previously a weakness.
She won the shot put at Götzis and in Tokyo, with the former performance underscoring her mental growth. Her first heave was 13.31 meters, far below her average. But then she came back on her second throw with a PR of 14.86 — a number she topped in Tokyo with a 15.80.
“I asked what she did different on that second throw, and she said, ‘I just gave myself a stern talking to,’” Welty recalled. “… That’s just who she is. When she decides to do something, she knows what’s important to focus on and how to fix her mistakes. She does that better than most people I’ve ever seen.”
According to Holloway, even in the wake of a 7,000-point score and world title, Hall still has lots of room for growth.
“When she wasn’t 100%, she was bullying and forcing her way through things, so it created bad habits,” Holloway said. “Now that she’s healthy again, we’ve got to get back to (the technique) she was doing before. So even when you look at that big score (at Götzis), she can definitely run the hurdles better, run the 200 better, she can long jump a little better. There’s more points there.”
Hall, back to No. 1 in the world, agrees. So does her mentor Joyner-Kersee, with whom Hall has become close over the past few years. Joyner-Kersee told The Associated Press that Hall “has the ability to put up whatever score she wants to put up.”
And so the chase toward ultimate greatness rolls on, with all of Hall’s focus now on gold at the 2028 L.A. Games. In the process, she’s capable of giving herself a chance to become the sport’s all-time great.
“I am still disappointed with my score at worlds (of 6,888 points),” Hall said. “I know my coaches and others say I hold myself to an unrealistic standard. But I could’ve scored higher than I did. I’ve shown myself I can win these championships. So next time I come (to worlds in 2026), I want to put on a show. I want to score the 7,000 mark, as another preview of what I can do in L.A.”
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