US track and field Olympic hopefuls compete at Hayward Field in Eugene

Hayward Field is once again hosting the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene which end on Sunday. The nation’s best sprinters, hurdlers, javelin throwers and more are competing for a shot to qualify for the summer games, which kick off next month in Paris. Among those who’ve already punched their tickets is Ryan Crouser, an Oregonian and two-time gold medalist who finished first in the men’s shot put final on Saturday night. Also competing is fellow Oregonian Jaida Ross, a University of Oregon junior who was named the 2024 National Women’s Field Athlete of the Year earlier this month after she became the first collegiate woman to throw the shot put more than 20 meters. Joining us to discuss the key developments so far at Hayward Field is Sarah Lorge Butler, a contributing writer for Runner’s World who is based in Eugene.

Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with the Olympic track and field trials, which are once again being held at Eugene’s Hayward Field. The country’s best sprinters, distance runners, jumpers, and throwers are all vying for the chance to represent Team USA in Paris next month. The trials are only about halfway through, but we already know that Oregon will be well represented. Two-time gold medalist Ryan Crouser, who grew up in Gresham, won the men’s shot put final. Former University of Oregon runner Cole Hocker won the men’s 1500m. Current Duck Jaida Ross, who broke the collegiate record in women’s shot put, will compete on Saturday.

Sarah Lorge Butler is a contributing writer for Runner’s World who is based in Eugene. She’s been covering the trials and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Sarah Lorge Butler: Thanks, Dave. Great to be here.

Miller: I want to start with the men’s 1500m – basically a mile – a tremendously exciting race with a few folks with Oregon connections. Can you describe how this race went down?

Lorge Butler: Yeah, this was an amazing race. It started out really fast. The first lap was 56 seconds for 400m. I don’t know if you ever run on the track or if you ever have in the past, but trying to get around that thing in 56 seconds, and then having to do another two and three-quarters laps, that’s pretty darn fast. So right away, it was out hard. The pre-race favorite, Yared Neguse, took the lead. It went fast all the way until, on the bell lap, Cole Hocker, who as you said, spent a year at the University of Oregon, he went flying by like a freight train, passed Neguse with 250 to go. Neguse thought he could catch him in the home straight, he came back on Hocker just a little bit, but Hocker won. The winning time, 3:30, was a meet record by more than four seconds. It was an unbelievable race.

Miller: What is this set up for the 1500m in the Olympics? I’ve seen runners, journalists say that at this point in 2024, this is one of the most exciting races in the sport. What might it be like in Paris?

Lorge Butler: Yeah, this is a great event. There are three really amazing non-American athletes. One is Jakob Ingebrigsten. He’s a Norwegian athlete, and he holds all kinds of records. But the last couple world championships, the 1500m is the signature event. And in both of those, he’s been upset. So 2022 in Eugene, 2023 in Budapest, both times runners from Great Britain passed him with 200 to go and won the race. It was a shock both times. So there’s been sort of a war of words between Ingebrigsten and the guy who beat him in 2023 Josh Kerr, who happens to train in Seattle with the Brooks Beasts.

So you’ve got those three guys all coming back, Ingebrigsten, Josh Kerr, and then Jake Wightman who also upset Ingebrigsten in 2022. Then you throw the Americans in there, Neguse and Cole Hocker, and a couple of men from Kenya, it should be an amazing race. It’ll be great. You have to go three rounds in the Olympics like you at the trials. They have preliminaries, then a semifinal, and then a final. But it should be awesome.

Miller: Let’s turn back to the trials, the women’s 5000m race. After 40 minutes and about 40 seconds, this came down to 0.02 seconds. Can you describe the ending?

Lorge Butler: Yeah, it was unbelievable. You have Elle St. Pierre, who everybody thought would probably win this race, versus Elise Cranny. Both have already made Olympic teams in 2021, two just incredibly excellent runners. But St. Pierre had the slight lead on the final lap. And Cranny tried to draw out even on the back stretch, she came even with St. Pierre coming down the final 100m. You just kind of held your breath waiting to see who would win. St. Pierre, sort of threw up her arms at the end, but it was because they were holding the tape. She said it certainly wasn’t celebration, she didn’t know if she had won or not, she was just trying to make sure she didn’t get tangled up in the tape that they had.

Miller: I missed that. I thought it was celebration, and well deserved.

Lorge Butler: I don’t think she knew at that point that she had won, because like you say, the margin was so small, just 0.02 seconds.

But then the next moments were really heartwarming. St. Pierre has a son who’s about 15 months old. She wanted to have a baby for so long, and she took last year off of running even, with the world championships. She had her son, she watched last year’s world championships from her home in Northern Vermont. And to see her just come back as strong as she had been, she’s actually better than she was before she had a baby. And to see her out there with that little cute kid on the track, it was a pretty heartwarming moment.

Miller: Another athlete who earned a spot on the team is Sha’Carri Richardson. Can you remind us what happened to her three years ago?

Lorge Butler: Sha’Carri is 5′1″, but man does she have an outsized presence in this sport. She is just a lot of fun. Three years ago she won the Olympic trials in Eugene in the 100m, made her first Olympic team. She jumped into the stands to hug her grandmother. She was just great. And then a couple days later, the news came down that she had tested positive for THC, the main ingredient in marijuana. You can have THC in your system if you’re just training, but you can’t have it in your system during meets. I think the world anti-doping authorities believe it has performance enhancing properties. So unfortunately, she was stripped of her title and wasn’t allowed to go to Tokyo to represent the United States in the 100m, which is pretty much the highest profile event that track has. And a lot of people just thought that anti-doping code was sort of antiquated and saw it as a big injustice. And other people were just sort of on the “well, the rules are rules” side.

But anyway, it’s great to see her back. She’s running better than ever and she won the 100m again on Saturday night, and it was super. So back she goes, this time to Paris.

Miller: The shot putter Jaida Ross, who is from Medford, a senior at the University of Oregon, she’s gonna compete at Hayward Field in just a couple of days for a chance to go to her first Olympics. What can you tell us about her dominance in the sport this year?

Lorge Butler: She is a junior, just finishing her junior year at the University of Oregon. Twice she broke the NCAA record this year. She threw the shot put, which on the women’s side it’s an 8.8lb ball of metal. She threw it over 20m. Not a lot of Americans have ever really done that, that’s 65ft and like 7, almost 8 inches. Then she went on to win the NCA title in the event, and she’s got the fifth best throw in the world so far this year. So she could make the Olympic team. The competition starts on Friday, and it finishes on Saturday.

She grew up in North Medford, she’s a product of Oregon. She had a little media availability yesterday, and I was just watching the video of it. It was really touching, she says it’s kind of mind blowing to me growing up in a smaller town, being able to represent that part of Oregon and Oregon as a whole. Oregon has my heart. I want to represent it in any way I can. And the Olympics is a pretty good way to do it. She’s a lovely human being.

Miller: Then there is fellow Oregonian Ryan Crouser, two time defending Olympic champion, basically the best male shot putter in history – I think it’s fair to say that. He’d been injured though in the months leading up to the trials, and then he did what I guess the best in their sport often do, which is he rose to the occasion and he won. What does he look like heading into Paris?

Lorge Butler: I wondered if you were gonna ask what does he look like in general. Because he is 6′7″, and 320lbs. He is just an absolute mountain of a man to see him walk by. But incredibly graceful on his feet, which you have to be to throw the shot put that far. It’s as much footwork as it is brute strength.

I never count him out. He’s won the last two gold medals in the Olympics. He’s looking for his third gold medal in Paris. And yeah, he does seem to rise to the occasion. I would never bet against Ryan Crouser. I think he’ll be ready to go.

Miller: One of the storylines of the trials this year is a 16 year old sprinter phenom, 400m runner named Quincy Wilson. What can you tell us about him?

Lorge Butler: Quincy Wilson, 16 years old, made it to the final of the 400m. It’s just amazing to look at the photos and the videos, because he is much shorter than the other competitors who are all in their twenties, and I think there’s one guy who is 30.

Miller: Much more slight as well. Often 400m runners have pretty big biceps to sort of power their bodies through. He’s a whippet.

Lorge Butler: Yeah, he is a whippet. He’s still growing, he’s only started growing. He’s so charming. I asked him how tall he was, he said he was 5′9″. His coach was standing nearby and rolled his eyes and grumbled in his head. Maybe he’s 5′9″ with his shoes on, but I don’t think so. I’m 5′6″ and I was looking him straight in the eye.

So yeah, he’s small, but he’s just incredibly quick and breaking all kinds of under 20 world records. By finishing sixth in the final, he might be selected for the relay pool at the Olympics. So there’s the 4x400m relay, and they probably wouldn’t put him in the final of that, but they have heats of that and they could put him in the first round heat, for instance. Or there’s also the mixed relay, which is two men and two women, and each one runs a 400m leg. And so they might put him in that as well. It would just be great to see him, a junior in high school, going to the Olympics. The US is usually pretty strong in 400m relays, so he could come home with a gold medal.

I also asked him if he has a curfew, he’s 16 years old. And he said he voluntarily puts himself to bed at 9:30 every night. He knows he needs his sleep, so it’s not even a curfew, it’s his choice. And as a parent of teenagers, I was sort of impressed by that.

Miller: Although maybe it’s not surprising given the unreal, almost superhuman level of dedication that it takes to get to that level. Of course you’d also have the dedication to just put yourself to bed.

We’ve been talking about the joy of victories. But this trials, some people win, meaning the top three, and some people lose and. And one person lost in a particularly painful way. Athing Mu, the reigning gold medalist in the women’s 800m, had an anguishing race. Can you describe the 800m finals?

Lorge Butler: The 800m is, even in the best of circumstances, an event that’s like bumper cars. They are going so fast and they are so tightly packed in together that there is a lot of tripping and stumbling. So the race goes off, they start off that race in lanes, and then they sort of cut in. And everybody wants to get to the inside before the 200m mark so that you’re not running out in lane two as you come around. 200m in, Athing Mu gets tangled up. She has really long legs and a really long back kick, if you can picture it when she’s running. And she just went down to the ground. She got up quickly, but by then the pack was too far a distance for her to make up. She ran hard for like the first 400m, but just basically jogged it in for second 400m. It was really sad to see because as she’s just the American record holder in the event, the reigning Olympic gold medalist, and she won’t be going back to Paris. It is a cruel sport.

Also, I should point out that Oregonian Raevyn Rogers, who was the Olympic bronze medalist in 2021, she was sort of behind Mu when she fell and kind of got thrown off her race. And so she finished way back. She also won’t be going back to the Olympics. Raevyn Rogers is such an Oregon legend that her face is one of the four that’s emblazoned on the tower that goes over Hayward Field. So it was a sad day for Athing Mu, you could hear her audibly sobbing as she walked off the track on the NBC broadcast. And then it was a really rough day for Raevyn Rogers as well.

Miller: What does this show us about the US system of qualifications for the team, and how it compares to the ways that other countries select their teams?

Lorge Butler: The US system is brutal but fair. You have to be on your best on one day, you have to finish in the top three on that day, or else you stay home. And if you don’t, there’s no excuses and you have to wait another four years. Other countries, they have committees that name the team, or they might pick one or two spots via a race but then leave a third discretionary spot or something like that.

Miller: For sort of backroom deals in a sense? Or what I imagine fans would see, with all the potential negative questionable decision making behind the scenes that that implies.

Lorge Butler: Exactly. The American athletes, they know the system, they say it’s tough, but they’re all in agreement. It’s the only fair way to do it. Show up at your best, you know what the dates are, finish in the top three, and you get to go to Paris. I like the way we do it, but it makes it really dramatic racing.

Miller: And that gets to what’s at stake for this. So you’re in the top three, you go to Paris, or Mexico City, or LA, or wherever. You’re four or behind and you don’t. What does it mean for a track and field athlete to make it onto the Olympic team?

Lorge Butler: It’s life changing for them in a lot of ways, primarily financially. They get a bonus from USA Track and Field, the federation. They’ll get bonuses from their sponsors. There is no league for track and field. The NBA or Major League Baseball, the NFL, they all have rookie minimums and things like that. Track and field athletes get by on prize money and sponsorship dollars, they run for Nike or Adidas or for Anh, and that’s how they get paid. And if you make an Olympic team and can sort of represent your sponsor on the biggest stage in the world, they’re gonna reward you handsomely for that. And also, then you wind up on a Wheaties Box or in commercials for non track companies. It can just be the difference between making a life doing this and having to go get a regular job.

So that’s the main way. And also your recognition skyrockets. Track and field in the United States doesn’t get a lot of eyeballs on it except for every four years. And to make the team, it really just raises your profile.

Miller: You’re going to be covering the Olympics in Paris for Runner’s World. This will be your second games after Rio in 2016. What are you most looking forward to this time around?

Lorge Butler: I guess certain events. The men’s 1500m, the women’s 1500m. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who we haven’t talked about, in the women’s 400m hurdles, assuming she makes the team and something crazy doesn’t happen, she can set a world record any time she’s on the track.

I haven’t been to Paris in decades. I went when I was in college. And I mean, it’s an amazing city. I just can’t wait to be there and to just see the games and soak it up.

Miller: Sarah, thanks so much.

Lorge Butler: Thank you for having me, Dave. I really appreciate it. I love your show. Have me on anytime to talk about track.

Miller: OK, maybe from Paris. Sarah Lorge Butler is a contributing writer for Runner’s World. She joined us from Eugene before she heads to Paris next month.

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