EUGENE, Ore. — Athing Mu crossed the finish of the Olympic Trials 800 meter final Monday night dead last, tears in her eyes, her face covered with a sense of disbelief she shared with every other person at a sold-out Hayward Field.
She made her way through a track cluttered with celebrating winners and newly minted Team USA members. other runners collapsed flat on their backs from effort and heartbreak.
Mu looked straight ahead, not noticing or at least not paying attention to the elation and the exhaustion, walking with the purpose of a woman in a hurry to put the scene and the night behind her, seemingly not sure of where she was going only where she wasn’t.
As Mu walked, she tore her hip number once, then twice, and then once again, until it had been reduced to small pieces, a souvenir of a season left in tatters.
Less than 200 meters into the Trials final, Mu’s hopes of defending her Olympic title came crashing down onto an unforgiving track, sending a gasp through Hayward Field that will echo all the way to Paris.
Mu, the third fastest woman over the distance this century, tumbled after bumping into another athlete, nearly setting off a nine-runner pile-up, a crash that left her out the race, the rest of the field and a spot in the Paris Olympics growing further distance with each step, questions her only company for two agonizing minutes.
Nia Akins of the Brooks Beasts Track Club won the final with a convincing exhibition of front running, finishing in 1 minute, 57.36 seconds. Nike’s Allie Wilson was second in 1:58.32 followed by Stanford’s Juliette Whittaker in third at 1:58.45.
Yet even as Wilson and Whittaker battled down the home stretch, the stadium’s focus turned to Mu still struggling around the final turn on the way to finishing in 2:19.69, more than 25 seconds off her American record of 1:55.04.
“It’s just stuff happens,” said Akins, who three years ago also suffered a fall at the Olympic Trials. “It’s the sport. It’s just crazy and unpredictable and tough. Yeah, nobody deserves that. She didn’t deserve that today and three years ago I didn’t deserve it. It just happens.”
“I didn’t see much,” Wilson said. “I kind of just heard something happened and everyone, you know, you hear the crowd, their reaction.”Obviously it’s devastating that that happened. I’m devastated for Athing. Obviously, we all know she’s so, so talented and such an amazing competitor. And she would have represented this country well. But I think we have three amazing women who are going to go do our bests and see what we can do out there.”
In the 800 runners must stay in their lanes for the first 100 meters before cutting in. Halfway down the backstretch, Mu, who likes to run from the front in part because of her long stride and who started in lane 6, started to cut when she clipped the leg of Raevyn Roger, losing her balance then falling into Whittaker on her left, then falling on her back on the track.
The crash was the latest and most devastating setback to Mu over the past two seasons.
“Until Friday’s opening round, Mu, who trains in Los Angeles with 400 meter hurdle record-holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone under Bobby Kersee had not raced since last September’s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene because hamstring injuries.”
Mu’s 1:54.97 victory at Pre was the high spot in a season that saw her finish third at the World Championships and limited her to just four meets because of hamstring issues.
Just weeks after she turned 19, the New Jersey native won the Olympic 800 gold medal in Tokyo, becoming the first American woman to win the event since Madeline Manning in 1968, the first 800 U.S. gold medalist male or female since Dave Wottle’s epic come from nowhere victory at the 1972 Games in Munich. Adding a second gold medal in the 4×400 relay, Mu was the youngest U.S. track and field champion since 1964.She added a World title in 2022 and then moved from College Station, Texas where she had attended Texas A&M to Los Angeles to train with Kersee.
Cole Hocker wins the men’s 1500-meter final during the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Team Trials Monday, June 24, 2024, in Eugene, Ore. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Earlier Monday, former Oregon NCAA champion Cole Hocker ran a meet record 3:30.59 to win the Trials 1,500 final in arguably the greatest 1,500 race in American history.
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Yared Nuguse of the On Athletic Club and the American record-holder in the mile, was second in 3:30.86 with adidas rising star Hobbs Kessler third 3:31.53.
Six runners finished under the Olympic qualifying standard of 3:33.50, eight of the 12 finalists were faster than the previous meet record. Vincent Ciattei was clocked in 3:31.78, more than two seconds under the Trials record but still only managed fourth place.
Also Monday, former USC NCAA champion Michael Norman made a second Olympic team, taking second in the 400 in 44.1. Adidas’ Quincy Hall won the event in 44.17.