Olympics Paris 2024

The track and field events at this summer’s Olympics don’t start until August, but Team USA are already losing medals in June.

Athing Mu, who won gold in the women’s 800m in Tokyo and followed up with a world championship the next year at the age of 20, isn’t going to Paris. Neither are Brooke Andersen, the 2022 world champion in the women’s hammer throw, or Laulauga Tausaga-Collins, the 2023 world champion in the women’s discus.

What happened? Simple. The USATF Olympic trials happened.


Tausaga-Collins fouled out of the discus qualification round in spectacular fashion, with throws that missed the legal target area by such a wide margin that organizers can count themselves lucky that no one was on the track.

Andersen, whose best throws this year rank first, fourth, seventh, 10th and 12th in the world, fouled out in more mundane fashion in the final.

But the lingering image of these trials may be of a tearful Mu, who crossed the finish line last after she fell on the first lap of the final in Eugene, at the showcase venue for the sport in the United States. She had battled back from injury and a self-imposed break to rediscover her love of running, and she looked great winning her semi-final.

USA Track and Field denied Mu’s appeal, in which veteran coach Bobby Kersee claimed she was clipped by another runner.

Mu’s ability is not in doubt. Her 10 fastest times are all well under 1:58, including a national record 1:54.97 last fall at the Prefontaine Classic. In place of Mu, the United States will send Juliette Whittaker, who hadn’t broken the 1:59 mark until Monday’s final, when she took third in 1:58.45. Whittaker is a rising star who won the NCAA championship for Stanford earlier this month, but reaching an Olympic podium in a few weeks will require a tactical race and perhaps some good fortune.

At least Whittaker has met the Olympic qualifying standard, doing so in the trials final. In the hammer throw, three athletes who’ve met the standard are looking up at Erin Reese, who took third place in the trials but does not yet have a place in Paris.

All of which means the track and field community in the US has to ask itself: Is the current format – in which athletes’ place on the Olympic team is decided solely by performance at the trials – really the best way to choose a team?


It’s a question that has come up before, especially in 1992, when Reebok’s ubiquitous “Dan and Dave” ad campaign built around world decathlon champion Dan O’Brien and 1990 Goodwill Games champion Dave Johnson came to a screeching halt when O’Brien missed his three attempts in the pole vault at the US Olympic trials.

One bad day in an event with literal pitfalls flushed away millions of dollars in marketing along with a prime opportunity to put the sport firmly in the consciousness of a country with a limited attention span……..

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/a...-track-800m-paris-2024?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other