Congratulations Are In Order ⏱️
Lap 181: Powered By Asics
CITIUS MAG was proud to share time in Paris at the Asics House as we celebrated Valarie Allman’s second Olympic gold medal in the women’s discus. Catch our conversation with her above.
This week’s newsletter was compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder.
The 2024 Paris Olympics have officially wrapped and Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg are already shifting their sights toward LA 2028, but even as we catch up on sleep and cut down on screen time, we’re not quite ready to move on.
There was so much incredible track and field that took place over the last two weeks that it feels like years’ worth of stories got buried in the giant heap of medals. So before the dust fully settles on the purple track and the takes get swept away in the Seine, let’s take a moment to doll out some proverbial kudos to some of the most toast-worthy moments, performances, and athletes of the 2024 Games.
Congrats To The Stade De France 🇫🇷
Cyrena Samba-Mayela after becoming France’s first track and field medallist in the 100m hurdles. (Photo by Justin Britton / @Justinbritton)
Call us crazy, but it sure seems like filling a stadium with 70,000 screaming fans is the ideal way to watch track. The French crowds showed up and showed out, offering plenty of support for all the biggest stars and deafening roars for their hometown heroes. Some of the week’s largest cheers weren’t for Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s world record or Faith Kipyegon’s threepeat; they were for scrappy French middle-distance runners using the “Paris push” to advance out of the repechage round and into the semifinals.
Fittingly, the biggest moment of l'athletisme for the French home crowd came on the final day of competition, when in one of the last finals of the whole Olympics, les Bleus finally got their first track and field medal of the Games via an incredible silver-medal run by hurdler Cyréna Samba-Mayela. Not only did the 23-year-old Samba-Mayela improve her personal best from 12.68 to 12.31 this year to become a contender at the perfect time, she also came back from a bout of COVID in June to navigate one of the deepest 100m hurdle fields in history and land on the podium.
The in-stadium DJ may have slightly overplayed “Freed From Desire” and “Sweet Caroline,” but hey – they had an in-stadium DJ who actually cared about getting the crowd pumped up. More of that, please! One of the most defining moments of the Games was the incredible laser-light show entrance, color coordinated with the finalists’ countries, that preceded the men’s 100-meter final. Unfortunately, the tightly-packed schedule for most of the evening sessions made it hard to replicate the Pink Floyd-esque display for other finals, even if the crowd loved it. Take notes, LA schedulers!
Congrats To Sha’Carri Richardson On Transcending Track & Field 💫
Sha’Carri Richardson’s Olympic debut resulted in a 100m silver medal finish and a 4×100m relay Olympic title. (Photo by Kevin Morris / @Kevmofoto)
Under the weight of intense expectations, Sha’Carri Richardson met the moment and turned in a couple of stellar performances in her debut Olympics. First, she nabbed silver in the 100m, despite getting out of the blocks a bit slowly, then she delivered a blistering anchor leg on the 4 x 100m, taking the U.S. squad from third, to first, and memorably staring down Germany’s Rebecca Haase and Great Britain’s Daryll Neita en route.
During the medal ceremony for the relay, Richardson was visibly emotional, and who can blame her? The past three-plus years have been a roller coaster for the Dallas native. And it’s hard to even fathom the release – and frankly, relief – she must have experienced when she felt the comforting heft of Olympic gold draped around her neck.
During the leadup to Paris, and certainly during the Games themselves, Richardson was among the most promoted members of Team USA, across all sports. NBC marketing spots featured her frequently and prominently. She was the star of commercials for brands like Powerade and Olay. It’s safe to say – whether you like it or not – that Richardson and Noah Lyles are the two most recognizable, actively competing American track athletes.
But the biggest sign that Richardson will remain in the limelight once the American sporting world moves on from the Olympics, (by like, the end of this week) is that she was prominently sitting courtside during the men’s basketball gold medal game between France and the United States. Wedged between the retired bucketeer Carmelo Anthony and late night talk show goon Jimmy Fallon, Richardson appeared right at home among the A-listers taking in the game from the see-and-be-seen section.
The sporting world, like many other fields, is subject to a 24-hour news cycle. The golden goose many top athletes will be chasing this week is staying in the headlines after August 11th – whether by booking a spot on Dancing With The Stars or landing the next big brand deal. You’ve gotta stay relevant during the offseason or else you cease to exist to the masses. This is why mid-tier NBA players post sweaty videos of themselves firing off jumpers every August: part of the job is reminding sports fans you exist or they’ll move on to the next shiny object. Chopping it up with Melo and sitting within arm’s reach of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is a promising sign that Sha’Carri understands the assignment.
Congrats To Grant Fisher On Breaking Through 👊
Grant Fisher left Paris with bronze medals in both the 10,000m and 5000m. (Photo by Kevin Morris / @Kevmofoto)
Heading into Paris, Team USA’s Grant Fisher was developing something of a reputation as the king of near misses – a tough racer with solid instincts and a good kick, but missing something in the toolkit to land inside the top-three. In the last few championships, Fisher had put together strong runs in 5000m and 10,000m finals, only to land just tenths (or hundredths) of a second on the wrong side of the podium.
At the start of 2024, there were a lot of questions around how Fisher’s transition away from Bowerman Track Club and back to his high school coach would serve the 27-year-old. Is solo training really the best bet for a distance runner accustomed to world-class workout partners? With three American records under his belt with BTC, why was he leaving a clearly-successful setup? And would returning to a coach better known for producing Foot Locker finalists than Olympic medalists really pay off?
At seemingly every opportunity this year, Fisher proved that his big bet on himself was the right move. First, he broke the American indoor 2-mile record at the Millrose Games on Josh Kerr’s heels. Then, he soloed a 12:51 indoor 5000m PB. He clocked a sub-27 and sub-13 outdoors against strong competition, then even managed to pick up a 1500m PB in New York. In June, after only winning one national title with Bowerman, Fisher picked up wins in both the 10,000m and 5000m at the U.S. Olympic Trials. And while his strength remained world-caliber, promising signs of improved leg speed like his battle to the line with Dominic Lobalu in the London Diamond League 3000m were pointing to a new and improved medal-contending model.
And boy, oh boy, did Fisher back it up once he got to Paris. Against talented fields that included runners like world record holder Joshua Cheptegei, Olympic champion Selemon Barega, World champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and a large handful of 12:40/26:40 guys, Fisher picked up two bronze medals in the 5000m and 10,000m. For context, Americans picked up three medals total in those two events from 1968 to 2021. His ability to bounce back from the 10,000m into medal contention was particularly impressive, given that the first final of Paris required a 26:43.46 run to make the podium. Fisher deserves our heartiest congratulations not just for leveling up, but for doing it on his own terms to incredible results.
Congrats To Sifan Hassan, On Well… Everything 💃
Sifan Hassan rewrote history at the Paris Olympics by winning gold in the marathon and claiming bronze in both the 5000m and 10,000m. (Photo by @Kevmofoto)
For the second Olympics in a row, Sifan Hassan did something truly goofy, something that probably no other athlete in the world would opt into. And for the second Olympics in a row, that goofy schedule panned out in a way it wouldn’t have for any other athlete in the world.
What do you do after you successfully medal in the 1500m-5000m-10,000m triple? You scrap the 1500m and replace it with the marathon for only your fourth go at the distance. (So what if it means you’re racing an additional 37.5 kilometers over the course of 10 days?)
This time around Hassan’s medal haul skewed a bit bronzer, thanks to third-place finishes in both the 5000m and 10,000m, but she capped off another legendary Olympic outing on a high note, winning the marathon in Olympic record-setting time. (Fun fact: her 2:22:55 mark is quicker than Emil Zátopek’s winning marathon time from his own 1952 5000m-10,000m-marathon triple. To be fair, Zátopek’s 5000m and 10,000m performances resulted in gold medals, and were run in faster times than Hassan.)
Hassan’s strategy in her two track races was simple, and at times amusing: sit in the very back for as long as tactically possible, then push toward the front when The Move is finally made. In the 5000m, she went from ninth at 4000m to third at the finish, closing her last kilometer in 2:35. In the 10,000m, she went from 12th at 9000m to third at the finish, closing her last kilometer in 2:42.
And in the marathon, while she did not sit in the very back – that would have left her about 90 minutes behind the leaders when it came time to kick, a distance too far even for Hassan – she did hide on the heels of the lead pack until the final 400 meters, when she unleashed a ferocious final burst of speed to run the legs out of marathon world record holder Tigst Assefa.
Where does Hassan go from here? If she’s still firing on all cylinders for LA28, does she attempt the quad and bring the 1500m back into the fold? Does she learn how to steeple? Does she even need to attempt another outlandish Olympic schedule in order to bolster her resume for the ongoing “GOAT” debate?
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Congrats To 4 Of 5 U.S. Relay Squads 🇺🇸
Team USA’s quartet of Gabby Thomas, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Alexis Holmes, and Shamier Little after setting the new American 4×400m relay record in 3:15.27. (Photo by Justin Britton / @Justinbritton)
We’re pretty sure Kevin Durant was talking about the broader implications of donning an American national team uniform here, but it also sounds a lot like he was talking about Team USA’s 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m relay performances.
Kevin Durant, on patriotism, and playing for Team USA:
“A lot of bullshit happens in our country. But a lot of great things happen, too.”
In the pouring rain, the U.S. women snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, overtaking Great Britain and Germany thanks to a brilliant Sha’Carri Richardson anchor leg. (They wouldn’t have even been in the running without a 9.98 second leg by TeeTee Terry, though!) Their exchanges weren’t always the cleanest, but at the end of the day, this squad possessed enough firepower to pull it off just by not completely whiffing the handoffs. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Jamaica’s Olympics-long nosedive left them without any of the four legs that delivered 4 x 100m gold in Tokyo.
You could have been in a coma during the entire Olympic track and field program and accurately guessed the outcomes of the men’s and women’s 4 x 400m relays. The women have won every Olympic 4 x 400m since Atlanta in 1996, and the men have won six of eight in that same timeframe. In the shorter history of the mixed-gender 4x400m relay, Team USA hasn’t been quite as successful, but this year the squad still set the world record in the prelims and it took a superhuman 47.9 split from Femke Bol to relegate the U.S. to silver. These relays are solely about firepower. And that’s something the U.S. has plenty of in the one-lap distance.
The women – Shamier Little, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabby Thomas, and Alexis Holmes – all pitched in sub-50 splits. McLaughlin-Levrone went a step further and provided a 47.71(!), which was a big reason this team established a new American record. A huge shoutout to Little in particular, whose audacious 400m/400H double at the U.S. Trials didn’t land her in any individual events but served as great preparation for her four rounds of relay racing across the mixed and women’s 4 x 400 (her results: splits of 49.32, 49.39, 49.22, and 49.48). The men were operating without 400m champ Quincy Hall – who apparently ran so hard in the final he injured his hamstring – but no matter. With the help of a 43.26 second leg from Vernon Norwood and a 43.18 close from Rai Benjamin, the men were able to hold off a charge from Letsile Tebogo and his Botswana team, and also set a new Olympic record.
But then there’s the men’s 4 x 100m. Again, no shortage of firepower there. Even with Noah Lyles out of the roster, the U.S. can still field a team of world-beaters: Christian Coleman, Kenny Bednarek, Kyree King, and Fred Kerley. On paper, that’s at worst a gold medal this year, and at absolute best a potential American record. But if history is any indicator, at this point we’ve come to expect a DQ or DNF and hope to be proven wrong. The last time the U.S. men medaled in this event at the Olympics was at Athens in 2004.
It’s almost funny if it weren’t also pretty sad. There’s no lack of desire – none of the athletes on the start line for the final have Olympic gold on their shelves, and surely that’s the worthiest carrot of all to dangle – and finger-pointing at the athletes seems misguided given that we keep changing up the roster and getting the same results. We’re not certain what the solution is (Longer relay camps? Different coaches? More transparency in selection? All good places to start…), but how many Olympics have to go by before we finally start to rebuild this system from the ground up?
Congrats To Cole Hocker On Inheriting An Asterisk ✳️
Cole Hocker claiming the 1500m gold in an Olympic record of 3:27.65. (Photo by Justin Britton / @Justinbritton)
Last summer, when Yared Nuguse ran 3:29.02 at the Bislett Games, it presented track nerds with an interesting quandary: had he just broken the American record?
The answer depends on who you ask. According to World Athletics, yes: Nuguse’s performance in Oslo established a new national record. However, in the eyes of USATF, he came about a second and a half short of the real American record, 3:27.40, belonging to Bernard Lagat. (Kyle wrote more about the unusual circumstances around this disparity in recordkeeping last summer – you can read about it here.)
Regardless of whether you ascribe to USATF’s or WA’s interpretation of the True American Record, one weirdly similar, but different accolade is not up for debate: the men’s NACAC area record in the 1500m. Since WA and WA alone maintains the area record database, for the past year-plus, despite only maybe being the American record holder in the event, Yared Nuguse was unambiguously the North American record holder.
That is, until last Tuesday night, when Cole Hocker obliterated it, winning the damn Olympics in 3:27.65. So congrats to Hocker on his Olympic record, area record, and depending on where you draw the line, American record.
Congrats To The Best Non-Medal Performances Of The Paris Olympics 🙌
Bryce Hoppel was just shy of the podium, but his 1:41.67 4th place finish still broke the American record. (Photo by Kevin Morris / @Kevmofoto)
Just because you didn’t get a little chunk of the Eiffel Tower handed to you while your national anthem played doesn’t mean you didn’t have a successful Olympics! The unfortunate reality of all the biggest stars being in the same place, at the same time, competing for the same three spots, means that there are some damn fine athletes who went home empty-handed. What sucks most about the Olympics is that your performances don’t exist in a vacuum – there are many world-class 1500m runners, for example, who’ve simply had the bad luck to exist at the same time as Faith Kipyegon in her prime.
So before we let the full scope of the 33rd Olympiad get boiled down into Wikipedia charts and medal tables, let’s take a moment to give some serious props to the best non-top-three performances.
Bryce Hoppel’s American record: Imagine telling a track fan a year ago that 1:41.67 would not get you on an 800m podium in 2024. For context, in the eight global championships that have happened since David Rudisha’s world-record run in 2012, there has never been a winning time under 1:42. The American record that Hoppel knocked a huge chunk off of was Donavan Brazier’s 1:42.34 from Doha in 2019, which is still the World Championship record in the event. Hoppel just had the bad luck of crossing the line behind the #3, 4, and #5 fastest men of all time.
Rhasidat Adeleke’s streak of fours: Adeleke, the Irish wunderkind, had a lot of fours next to her name last week. She contested four 400m races (three rounds of the open and the 4 x 400m final) and came up with two fourth-place finishes, with a 49.28 in the open race and a phenomenal 48.92 split on the relay falling just short of the podium in both instances. And in both instances, Adeleke and her teammates were the victims of historic depth – never before in history had three runners broken 49 seconds in the same open 400m race, and never before in history had a 3:19 4 x 400m been insufficient to medal. Fortunately, Adeleke has a lot of championship racing ahead of her as she was the youngest finalist in the 400m final at 21 years old.
Kirani James’s incredible longevity: It’s not often that an Olympic champ finds themselves back in the final 12 years later, particularly in the sprint events where fast-twitch muscles are generally considered the provenance of youth. But James, the 2012 Olympic champion, continues to perform at an amazingly high level, running his fastest time since 2016 in the 400m semifinal and getting under 44 seconds for the ninth and tenth times of his career. What sucks is that four guys ran sub-44 ahead of him in the final.
Emile Cairess’s third marathon: Our America-centric readership who was thrilled by Conner Mantz’s eighth-place finish in the Olympic marathon should read up on the British runner a few places ahead of him. Cairess is a year younger than Mantz, is newer in his marathon career with only three career races under his belt, and has a faster PB at 2:06:46. And Cairess came within 30 seconds of a medal in the marathon in his Olympic debut, running 2:07:29 in his second marathon of the year. The future is very, very bright for this rising star.
Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy’s bad luck: While the repechage round model has generally received positive reviews, two runners who are probably not thrilled with the new innovation are Irish 1500m runners Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy. Somehow, both runners managed to finish one spot out of advancing in the first round of racing, came back the next day, and both finished one spot away from the semifinal again. Sullivan, the 22-year-old NCAA star for the University of Washington, was dealt a particularly tough hand, as she clocked a blazing-fast 4:00.23 run in the first round that wasn’t enough to advance.
Shafiqua Maloney’s big breakout: One of the best feel-good stories of the whole meet was Shafiqua Maloney of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, who finished one place and 0.24 seconds outside the medals in the women’s 800m final. Maloney talked about her tough journey to the Olympics with journalists between the rounds and managed to run two PBs and two 1:57s over the course of four days after heading into Paris with a 1:58.69 personal best. Maloney, who’s based in Fayetteville after a strong collegiate career at the University of Arkansas, had never made it out of the heats in two previous global championship appearances, so this was a huge step forward.
Congrats To fans Of Rampant Speculation 😵💫
Mondo Duplantis after breaking his own pole vault world record at the Paris Olympics. (Photo by Jacob Gower / @jacob_gower_)
With the Olympics behind us, as fans of track and field, typically we’d be left to ponder life’s big questions, like “what if so-and-so raced what’s-his-name at a weird distance?” This sort of hypothetical is usually just that – a mind game batted back and forth between running dorks during an easy run. But the day before the Zurich Diamond League meet, we’ll put speculation to rest, and turn our attention to two actual titans of track duking it out in a sprint.
Karsten Warholm and Mondo Duplantis are set to race a one-on-one 100m dash on Wednesday, September 4th. Going off personal bests is probably not the way to determine a favorite here, as Warholm’s comes from 2017 (10.49), and Duplantis set his 10.57 PB as a high school senior in 2018.
Instead, let’s take a more holistic view of the matchup. Both are likely faster in a pure speed sense than they were six or seven years ago. That said, Warholm’s event relies more on maintenance of near-top speed than the ability to gun it for 10 seconds, and he appears to be more of a strength-based 400m hurdler. (Rai Benjamin’s PBs over 100m is 10.03, for instance, run back in 2020.) Meanwhile, have you ever watched Duplantis hit the runway? He’s regarded as among the fastest – if not the fastest – vaulters on the circuit. His acceleration and strength is unquestionable, but you don’t start your pole vault approach out of blocks. When was the last time this guy practiced a true drive phase?
It should be a close finish. Our predictive speculation is that Warholm will be technically better out of the blocks but Mondo’s top speed will be much higher and they’ll meet near the finish line. Neither of these dudes would have agreed to race the other if they didn’t think they’d win. If all goes well, maybe we can round up a handful of Scandanavians and have them both double back to the 4 x 100m next year! But regardless of who places first on the track this time, the real winner will be us… the fans, who love this crap and are gonna be clamoring for more of it.
Rapid Fire Congratulations 🔥
Ryan Crouser continues to build upon his legacy by winning his third consecutive shot put Olympic gold. (Photo by Kevin Morris / @Kevmofoto)
– Congrats to Jamaican Rojé Stona on winning the discus throw for Jamaica – a delegation that sorely needed a win after a challenging Olympics. And congrats to Ryan Crouser, who not only won the shot put, but coached Rojé Stona in the discus! (Fun fact: Crouser still holds the U.S. high school discus record.)
– Speaking of Jamaican field and track excellence, it’s worth noting that after a historically-bad Olympics on the track for Jamaican sprinters, four of the nation’s six medals came from field events, all four of whom had never medaled at the Olympics before. That’s particularly ironic given Jamaican athletes’ vocal criticism of the way their federation treats the field half of the sport.
– Congrats to Shelby McEwen on taking home Olympic silver. Coming in, McEwen was considered an extreme long shot for bronze, so to PR by 3cm in the Olympic final and take it to a jump off against eventual gold medalist Hamish Kerr was truly remarkable. Despite random unsourced viral tweets to the contrary, the slightly-more-credible Washington Post reported the Kiwi had no interest in sharing gold, so McEwen had no real say in the matter of potentially pulling a “Tamberi-Barshim.”
– Congrats to Conner Mantz on making the team for the 2025 World Championships (if he wants it). USATF announced that one spot for each U.S. marathon squad for Tokyo would be awarded based on “rank order finish from among the top ten (10) finishers at the 2024 Olympic Games Marathon.” The next two spots for the men, and all three spots for the women, will be determined by world ranking from November 5, 2023 though midnight on May 4, 2025.
– Congrats to Dakotah Lindwurm on placing higher in her Olympic debut (12th, a marathon that was won in an Olympic record) than she did in her final NCAA race (34th, at the 2017 NCAA Division II cross country championship). Additional congrats on getting engaged after the race!
Rapid Fire Correction 😞
– In what might be the first correction ever issued by this newsletter – it’s certainly not the first mistake, but perhaps the most obvious – we need to own up to inadvertently highlighting the 2023 Beach to Beacon 10k results two weeks ago instead of the 2024 edition. This year, Tadese Worku was the first overall male finisher and Biya Simbassa was first American man. Faith Chepkoech won the women’s race, with Susana Sullivan claiming top American honors. We regret the unforced error, and hope that these athletes enjoy their belated bold text call out in the Rapid Fire Highlight section. You can find full results here.
