The List Of Big Names Who Didn't Make The Team, Or Didn't Make The Final, Reveals Something About The Tension, Drama Of These U.S. Trials

By David Woods for DyeStat

Tim Healy photo

EUGENE – It is insulting to soldiers to compare sports to combat. But inside the insular world of sports, track and field’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials are a battlefield.

There are casualties, and there is grief. Perhaps we elevate the Olympic Games to a disproportionate degree, but that is the reality of this sport.

In a culture that pays attention every four years, it could be argued being an Olympian is better than winning a World Championships medal, even if the latter is intrinsically more important.

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The first four days of the 2024 Trials at Hayward Field have been as tumultuous as any I’ve witnessed, and I’ve seen them all since 1976.

Christian Coleman, Athing Mu, Brooke Andersen and Laulauga Tausauga-Collins are all World champions and in peak years. Out. All of them.

Coleman will end up in the 4x100-meter relay, but he won’t end up with a 100-meter medal.

Also out: KC Lightfoot, one of the only pole vaulters on the planet capable of beating Mondo Duplantis. Among those active, no one except Mondo has vaulted as high as Lightfoot’s 19-11 (6.07m), and that was just 12 months ago. Lightfoot, then 21, was fourth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Doesn’t matter. Lightfoot couldn’t make 18-4.50 (5.60m) in qualifying. He must wait until Los Angeles 2028.

Also out: Kyle Garland, whose 8.720 points from May 2022 is the highest score among active American decathletes. He developed an injury in warm-ups for the pole vault.

That’s why Cole Hocker, emerging as a genuine contender for a gold medal in the 1,500 meters at the Paris Olympics, was as relieved as he was gratified to make a second Olympic team.

“This team is so cutthroat to make,” he said.

On 2024 world lists, there are almost as many American men in the top 16 of the 1,500 meters (six) as there are in the 400 meters (seven). Cutthroat.

Falling short of top three in the women’s 400 meters were 19-year-old Kaylyn Brown, ranked fifth in the world at 49.13, and Talitha Diggs, a 2022 national champion at age 19 and eighth at last year’s World Championships.

Inevitably, there will be heartbreak in the 110-meter hurdles.

Eleven of the fastest 14 men this year are Americans, an outrageous statistic even in an event so long dominated by Americans. That doesn’t include football player Devon Allen, who is injured but 12 months removed from a 13.04 that would rank second to Grant Holloway.

By far the worst calamity of the Trials has been the elimination of Mu, whose downfall was not of her creation. She was tripped Monday in the 800 meters, and Nia Akins went on to win. In 2021, Akins tripped and Mu went on to win.

“This team is the hardest team to make,” her coach, Bob Kersee, told the Orange County Register. “You can shoot all the commercials and make all the travel plans for the Olympics. But that all goes into the dumpster if you don’t make the team first.

“That, unfortunately, is going to be Athing’s testimony. No matter how talented you are, you have to make the Olympic team first. It’s tougher than winning the gold medal.”

In Tokyo, a 19-year-old Mu became the first American woman to win gold in the 800 since Madeline Manning in 1968. These Trials were Mu’s first meet since winning last year’s Diamond League final with an American record, also at Hayward Field.

Mu was a member of a gold-medal-winning 4x400 relay team in Tokyo, and it is within USA Track & Field’s purview to place her in the Paris relay pool.

“Sport is sport. She’ll bounce back,” Kersee told the Orange County Register. “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.”

Mu’s case reignites debate. Should some selections be pre-determined, with trials to select two more per event?

Michael Johnson, who won four Olympic golds and eight world gold, posted on X (formerly Twitter):

“I think we all feel terrible for Athing. Our US Trials selection policy works best because it eliminates politics in selection. And the strength and depth of the US team allows such a policy.”

If something happens to Mu’s teammate, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, in the 400-meter hurdles, debate will really intensify. No television show can match the reality of Olympic Trials drama.

Contact David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.