LOS ANGELES — Just as so much of American track and field’s history has been written between the white lines of Hayward Field, so has the storied venue chronicled the life and times of Athing Mu-Nikolayev, arguably the most gifted female half-miler in history.
Her triumphs and heartbreak, NCAA, Olympic Trials and World Championship titles, a pair of American records, crashing out of last summer’s Trials, are all told in two-minute chapters.
“It is a track she is familiar with,” said Bobby Kersee, Mu-Nikolayev’s coach, his voice revealing a realization of his understatement.
Mu-Nikolayev, the 2021 Olympic champion, returns to Tracktown USA to write a perhaps pivotal chapter as she takes on a world-class field at the 50th Prefontaine Classic Saturday afternoon in her first major 800-meter race since tripping and falling on Hayward Field’s backstretch last June.
She comes to Eugene looking neither to run away from her past or after records but to chase something more elusive and valuable than gold: joy
“Of course, every year we’re shooting for the World Championships or the Olympic championships,” Mu-Nikolayev, 23, said. “Of course, there’s nothing more that I want than gold. But I think most importantly this year, it’s just me regaining my joy back and finding my love for the sport. And if it’s not love, just appreciation for the sport and the places that I get to take me, and it’s just all that I get to do with it. So I think that’s my first priority. And I think once I gain that within myself and within the Lord, I think he’ll lead me into the direction of winning, of running fast and everything else that comes with it.”
Mu-Nikolayev’s pursuit of happiness began in the shadows of her darkest moment.
At 9:45 p.m. on the evening of August 5, eight women lined up on Stade de France’s purple track for an Olympic Games 800-meter final that had one conspicuous absence.
A few miles away, Mu-Nikolayev spent the final few minutes of her reign as Olympic champion trying to avoid seeing the race on television.
“I didn’t watch it live. I wasn’t really watching the Games too much,” Mu-Nikolayev recalled. “Just trying to get myself out of the environment as much as I could, even though I was training.”
Mu-Nikolayev was in Paris as part of Bobby Kersee’s Los Angeles-based training group that included Sydney McLaughlin, who would leave the Games with gold medals in the 400 hurdles and 4×400 relay.
But Kersee’s primary reason for bringing Mu-Nikolayev to Paris was more mental than physical.
The sooner Mu-Nikolayev dealt with the disappointment of crashing out of the U.S. Olympic Trials six weeks earlier, the most recent and devastating setback in two injury-riddled seasons, Kersee reasoned, the sooner she could move on.
Ignoring the disappointment of the Trials, hiding from it wasn’t going to make it go away.
“It was very hard,” Kersee said. “My philosophy of coaching is to put her right back in it, right away. And she tolerated me as a coach. It was tough for me and it was tough for her.”
“It was an experience,” Mu-Nikolayev said, “yeah.”
Kersee this week was asked when he had a sense that Mu-Nikolayev was back.
“I guess July 5,” he said laughing, referring to this weekend’s meet.
Mu-Nikolayev faces a Pre Classic field Saturday that includes five of last summer’s eight Olympic finalists, including Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma and Kenya’s Mary Moraa, the silver and bronze medalists respectively, plus former Oregon NCAA champion Raevyn Rogers, the Olympic bronze medalist behind Mu-Nikolayev in Tokyo in 2021, and Scotland’s Jemma Reekie, the 2024 World Indoor Championships runner-up.
But Kersee and Mu-Nikolayev’s primary focus is on the U.S. Championships next month and the World Championships in Tokyo in September.
“This is the first setting to see where we’re at,” Kersee said.
Four years ago, the only question mark hanging over Mu-Nikolayev was whether — or when — she would break the 800 world record set by Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia in 1983 during an era of state-sponsored doping by Soviet bloc countries and the absence of rigorous drug testing.
She won the 2021 Olympic Trials just days after turning 19, then became the first U.S. runner to win the Olympic 800 title since Dave Wottle in 1972, the first American woman gold medalist in the event since Madeline Manning at the 1968 Games, clocking an American record of 1 minute, 55.21 seconds. Mu-Nikolayev, the youngest female U.S. Olympic track and field champion in any event in 53 years, lowered her American record to 1:55.04 at the Pre Classic later that summer.
She returned to Hayward Field in 2022 to win the World Championships 800, becoming the youngest woman to hold Olympic and world titles.
But Mu-Nikolayev began battling a series of injuries in 2023. Limited to just four meets because of a hamstring injury, she was third (1:56.61) behind Moraa (1:56.03) and Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson (1:56.34) at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. A few weeks later, she beat both Moraa and Hodgkinson, later the 2024 Olympic champion, in the Diamond League Final at the Pre Classic, running an American record 1:54.97, then the third fastest time this century, the eight fastest all-time. Five of the seven women ahead of her were from Eastern bloc or communist countries and ran their times in the late 1970s or 80s.
But Mu-Nikolayev continued to struggle with injuries leading up to last summer’s Olympic Trials.
In the 800, runners must stay in their lanes for the first 100 meters before cutting in. Halfway down the first backstretch of the Trials final, 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 Rogers, losing her balance then falling into Stanford’s Juliette Whittaker on her left, then falling on her back on the track.
“Looking at the videotape, Rogers tripped her, had contact, in the left ankle, left thigh area,” Kersee told the Southern California News Group after the race. “Rogers was trying to squeeze in and caught her foot.”
Mu-Nikolayev got up but could not get back into contention, finishing last looking straight ahead as she crossed the finish line, not noticing or at least not paying attention to the elation and the exhaustion of those around her, 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 she 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.
“So life moves on,” Kersee said.
“I believe in faith,” Kersee continued that night. “I believe in redemption. That has to be the lesson here. That’s what I told Athing. You can’t get into the why me, why now? I’m not a Cleveland Browns fan or Chicago Cubs fan or Buffalo Bills fan. You can go around talking about ‘wide right.’
“Sport is sport. She’ll bounce back. She’s 22 years old. She’s going to win a lot of other races. She’s going to go to more Olympics and maybe even break some world records.”
So Kersee took Mu-Nikolayev to Paris.
“The worst thing to do when you’re depressed is to remove yourself, and alienate yourself and crawl up and let frustration get the best of you,” Kersee said. “You have to get back as fast as you can so you can get over that point.”
And after Paris, she was able to move on.
“Physically, I mean, I think that correcting my hamstring was a quick turnaround,” Mu-Nikolayev said. “I think coming back from hamstring injuries are usually not too bad, depending on what type of strain you have. But for me, it wasn’t too bad. I think mentally was the biggest thing for me, just because a lot of the joy comes with like running, and so not being able to compete kind of takes away, and a lot takes me a step back from just my normal environment, and so in that way, is a little depleting. But being able to now come out and actually be able to compete and just run and slowly, gradually build up into the worlds, I think that’s really helpful for me, mentally and obviously also physically.
“I mean, I think I kind of took it pretty well, being done with it well right after, just because I knew these year-to-year events happen, and then they go, you know, it’s a two week experience, and then you move on,” she continued, referring to missing the Olympic Games. “It’s kind of the mentality that I had. Of course, it’s a really big one. It would have been my second Olympic Games, but I know my career is long. I know I’m super young, and I’m just trying to be hopeful, because that’s the only way I’ll be able to get through my career in the most successful way.
“And so it kind of took me a little out to get over it, just because I was more so upset with how things went versus what was happening. And so it’s just nice to be back out again and just be able to compete and be around other really fast girls and again, slowly build into what’s to come the rest of the season.”
Kersee was upbeat before a training session earlier this week.
“She’s happy,” he said. “She’s healthy. She’s happily married.”
She married Yegor Nikolayev in March. Nikolayev represented Russia in the 1,500 at the 2012 Olympic Games.
“It’s been incredible,” she said. “I mean, I’m super so blessed to be able to experience marriage. Lord has definitely blessed me this year. It’s been really great. It’s been super helpful on the athletic side, because I don’t have to share this experience on my own. I have someone that I can kind of walk through the valleys and walk through the highs with, and it’s really nice that I have someone that’s supportive and getting started in the sport, as much as I do, and it’s just nice to have someone that’s your partner for life, and that can just experience things with you.”
And so she returns to Hayward Field, chasing a similar happiness around a track that has told so much of her story.
“I mean, I enjoy running,” she said. “I think I’m still working on truly embracing it and enjoying it, and, you know, going through the highs and lows and truly enjoying it. I think it’s been a little tough on me, because the past three years have been a little rocky, and so it’s kind of hard to kind of climb back up the ladder. But I’m happy to be here again. Like I said, I think it takes one race at a time, one practice at a time, and that’s what I’m just hoping to gain as I progress to the season, and I trust that the Lord will renew my joy, first and foremost in him, and then it’ll fall out onto the track as well.”