Mu filed an attraction and USA Track and Field officers sorted via the replays deep into the evening, however finally denied the protest. Kersee stated Mu bought spiked, had observe burns and harm her ankle.
“She’s going to be licking her wounds for a couple of days,” Kersee stated.
Mu bought again to her toes and completed, however was greater than 22 seconds behind the winner, Nia Akins, who ran 1 minute, 57.36 seconds. Mu was choking again tears as she headed rapidly off the observe and thru the tunnel after the race. She didn’t do interviews.
She was racing on the surface in a tightly bunched pack and appeared to be veering to her left towards the eventual third-place finisher, Juliette Whitaker, when she tripped and went tumbling, leaving three runners behind her flailing as they jumped over and round her.
Mu is hardly the primary athlete to have this occur. One of the extra memorable and heartbreaking moments on this observe got here eight years in the past in the identical occasion, when Alysia Montano, trying to return to the Olympics, bought tripped up in the homestretch and stayed down on the observe crying.
“I have a little mama bear feeling,” stated Montano, who’s on the observe this week doing in-house interviews over the PA system. “But the race is brutal sometimes. It’s two laps, a tight race and everyone’s feeling scrappy to try to figure out what position they want to get into.”
The Olympic trials marked Mu’s first meet of the yr after coping with accidents all season. She appeared to be in good kind in her first two rounds, and Kersee stated her season was coming collectively.
But in the 800 remaining, she barely made it half a lap.
Despite the fall, Mu might nonetheless go to Paris as a part of the US relay pool; she was a key a part of the crew’s gold-medal win in the 4×400 three years in the past in Tokyo.
After profitable NCAA, nationwide, world and Olympic championships all earlier than turning 21, Mu gained a bronze medal on the worlds final yr and, afterward, conceded she wanted a break from all of the stress, social media and different calls for that got here together with being tagged as certainly one of observe’s nice new stars.
In interviews main into this week’s meet in Eugene, she stated she had rediscovered her love for the game and was wanting ahead to the search to turn into a back-to-back champion.
She has dominated this distance thanks, in half, to an extended, loping stride, and that could be what price her in a race the place she got here in as the favourite.
“I heard it and I was just like ‘OK, keep running, it wasn’t you,’” second-place finisher Allie Wilson stated of the commotion that resulted in Mu’s tumble. “That, unfortunately, is part of racing. Things like that can happen.”
Anna Hall’s Comeback
Mu’s 800 was a stark distinction to that run by heptathlete Anna Hall lower than a half-hour earlier.
Hall gained her 800 — the seventh and remaining occasion in the two-day heptathlon — to win the title and make the Olympics. It got here three years after a stumble over the hurdles price her a spot on the Tokyo Games, and a mere six months after knee surgical procedure made her query if she might get again in time for Paris.
She, too, was crying after her race as she headed to the stands to hug the best American in that occasion, two-time Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
“I’m almost in shock,” Hall stated. “This year has been so hard. And falling in 2021. The journey to get here has been so much harder than I imagined.”
Other drama
There was drama elsewhere on a busy evening that included six finals.
The girls’s 5000-metre race got here all the way down to a .02-second distinction with Elle St. Pierre ending in 14:40.34 to barely beat Elise Cranny. Both are going to the Olympics.
Also, Vashti Cunningham, who had a mixed 13 straight US indoor and outside excessive leap titles coming into the week, wanted to win a jump-off for third to make her third Olympic crew.
Waiting recreation
Quincy Wilson, 16, completed sixth in the 400-metre remaining with a time of 44.94, his third sub-45 race in three tries on the trials.
Now, he’ll wait to see if the US observe crew calls on him to be a part of the relay pool.
“All I know is I gave everything I had,” he stated. “I can’t be too disappointed. I’m 16, and I’m running grown-man times.”