Follow our Olympics coverage in the lead-up to the Paris Games.
EUGENE, Ore.— The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, on this day at the University of Oregon’s storied Hayward Field, was more than a cliche. It was a portrait. A dichotomous display of the drama of sports.
A tale of two tears.
Nia Akins’ tears welled from joy. An abundance of appreciation. Akins ran the race of her life and won the 800-meter final at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, punching her ticket to her first Olympics with a personal-best time of 1:57.36.
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Athing Mu’s tears spilled from devastation. A heart shattered with disappointment and anger. Mu, the 22-year-old reigning Olympic gold medalist, had her repeat hopes dashed when she tripped 27 seconds into the race. She wound up on her back as the pack carried on.
Mu was merging left from Lane 6 as the runners started bunching together at about the halfway point of the first lap. She angled in front of Raevyn Rogers and was settling into third place, content with drifting off Kristie Schoffield and Juliette Whittaker. Then Mu’s left back foot clipped the calf of Rogers, who was following close behind her. Mu went down.
Dramatic final in the pic.twitter.com/j0SCWtGjA3
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) June 25, 2024
By the time Mu got up off the track, she was too stunned to find her bearings, too far back to catch up, even for her. In a mere second, what was supposed to be a crowning moment transformed into a cruel memory. The burgeoning middle-distance legend, and one of the marquee talents in USA Track and Field, was suddenly not Paris-bound.
Akins, 25, will be joined in Paris by Allie Wilson, 28, who finished in 1:58.32, and Whittaker, 20, who ran 1:58.45.
“Obviously, it’s devastating,” Wilson said after earning her debut on the Olympic team. “I’m devastated for Athing. Obviously, we all know she’s so, so talented and such an amazing competitor and she would’ve represented this country well. But I think we have three amazing women who are gonna go do our best and see what we can do out there.”
Mu finished in 2:19.69, nearly 25 seconds off her American record. She left the track sobbing, the anger and disappointment plastered on her countenance. Akins and Wilson were still floating on their signature moment in the sport as Mu retreated to privacy.
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No looks were shared. No hugs. No congratulations. No encouragement. They walked straight past each other. Joy and pain, passing like ships in the night. Both needing their respective spaces.
If anyone can empathize with Mu, it’s Akins. In the last Olympic trials in 2021, at this same venue, she fell and lost her chance. In the same scenario, Mu merged in front of her and it was Akins who went down, ending her bid for the Tokyo Olympics.
“Nobody deserves that,” Akins said. “She didn’t deserve it today. I didn’t deserve it three years ago. It just happens.”
Whittaker can relate, too. The Stanford product fell on this same track in the 2023 NCAA outdoor championships.
The unspoken contract of the 800-meter gantlet, of track and field in general, is that the brutality comes for everyone eventually. These women especially know it. They proverbially sign the contract every time they line up on the blocks, agreeing to the reality that triumph or trauma might meet them at the finish line.
Monday was Mu’s turn for trauma.
This 800-meter race is a delicate dance between strategy and talent, speed and endurance. The decision every 800-meter runner faces is how long to conserve energy in the pack and when to go. The pack is both safe harbor and a danger zone. Only two laps on the track, the silent jockey for position is compounded with the stubbornness of the runners, each of whom is executing a race plan with little room for error.
Mu, at 5-foot-10, excels in part because of her long, graceful strides. It also puts her in danger amid the subtle joust for track position. An almost innocuous bump of her left leg was enough to doom her defense of the gold medal. (Mu protested the result but was denied Tuesday.)
Michaela Rose, on the outside of Mu, narrowly avoided a collision. Whittaker was far enough ahead, barely, to avoid losing too much momentum. She quickly sidestepped and kept going. Wilson was making her move on the inside and didn’t break stride. She said not seeing what happened helped maintain her laser focus.
Akins, who was towards the back of the converging pack, used the opportunity to speed out wide and move up.
Monday was her turn for triumph.
Rose was in her usual position out front, a strategy she employs consistently. But with about 250 meters remaining, Akins did what she normally doesn’t — go early. She ran around Rose and took off.
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She waited three years for this shot. Nobody was catching her this time.
“I wasn’t even thinking,” said Akins, the only runner to finish the second lap in under a minute. “I just kind of, like, felt it in my spirit to just go for it. And then went. I never moved there before. So I was like, ‘Welp. I hope that works.’ And we were able to pull it off.”
This ends what has been a brutal calendar year for Mu. She won the 800-meter at the 2023 Prefontaine Classic, as part of the Diamond League, with a personal best 1:54.97 last September. Less than a year out from Paris, she was looking like the best in the world in what is a loaded discipline globally. But that was the last time she ran before the trials.
She withdrew from this year’s L.A. Grand Prix and the 2024 Prefontaine Classic. Her first race in nine months was Friday’s first round of trials. She finished third in her heat.
She won her next heat with an impressive surge down the last 100 meters. It seemed as if Mu had found her stride in time to be the favorite in the final. She’d earn a trip to Paris and get ready for the likes of Kenya’s Mary Moraa, Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson and Jamaica’s Natoya Goule-Toppin, who’d be coming for Mu’s crown.
That isn’t happening now. This highly competitive Olympic event will be without the woman ranked No. 5 in the world. The U.S. sends it’s top three from the trials. For American athletes, past greatness doesn’t earn them grace. It comes down to what they do on the day they most need to do it.
This time, the greatness of Mu was reduced to tears. And the persistence of Akins was exalted to them.
GO DEEPER
Quincy Wilson falls short of automatic Olympic berth in 400m
(Top photo of Athing Mu’s fall during Monday’s race: Craig Strobeck / USA Today)