EUGENE, Ore. — The oldest hurdler in the U.S. Olympic trials cried herself to sleep the night before her opening race.
An ill-timed hamstring tear halted Lolo Jones’ training for six weeks and left her fearful she would not be able to compete.
Last Saturday, Jones tested his hamstring, which had tightened after jumping six hurdles.
Jones tried again on Thursday. This time, she didn’t even get that far before the pain forced her to stop.
It took more than just grit and determination for Jones to get to the starting line Friday night for her 100-meter hurdles preliminary heat. The 41-year-old credited the anti-inflammatory medication given to her by her medical team.
“Toradol,” he said seriously. “The official sponsor of 40-year-olds!”
Those circumstances help explain why Jones beamed with pride after her heat despite falling behind her fellow competitors almost as soon as the starting gun sounded. It was an achievement for her to cross the finish line in 14.86 seconds, although that was almost two seconds slower than the times she was running before her injury.
Jones admitted he “ran a scary race” because he didn’t want to risk re-injuring his hamstring. The former brakeman for the U.S. national bobsleigh team described Friday’s race as scarier than sprinting down an icy, twisty track at 90 miles per hour.
“It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my career,” Jones said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I would have preferred a sledding accident than that.”
Another chance to compete awaits Jones on Saturday night despite his distant last-place finish. All 27 hurdlers who completed Friday’s preliminary heats advanced to the semifinals as a result of the expanded qualifying format and several injured athletes deciding not to race.
“If I wake up tomorrow and I don’t need my baton, we’re out!” Jones joked, poking fun at the fact that some of her competitors weren’t even born yet when she first showed up to the Olympic trials two decades ago.
Although Jones failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, she was the favourite to take home gold four years later in Beijing. She was pulling away from the field in the 100m hurdles final when she hit the ninth hurdle and tripped, eventually collapsing in frustration after her seventh-place finish.
Jones qualified for the London Olympics four years later, but fell short in her bid to win her first medal, settling for fourth place in the 100 hurdles final. She did not make the US teams for the 2013 or 2015 World Championships, nor did she race at the 2016 Olympic Trials.
By then, Jones had gone from dabbling in bobsleigh to dedicating himself to it with the same passion that he previously showed in the hurdles. He represented the USA at the Sochi Olympics and was part of the teams that won a pair of gold medals at the World Championships.
When USA Bobsled officials left her off the 2022 Olympic team, Jones was furious at the snub. She considered that “politics” contributed to her exclusion, that she was “expelled” because of her age.
A stubborn unwillingness to let anyone else dictate how her athletic career would end led Jones back to the sport that first catapulted her to stardom. It wasn’t enough for Jones to simply begin training again for the 100 hurdles. She set herself the audacious goal of becoming the first female hurdler in her 40s to qualify for the U.S. Olympic trials.
In April, Jones comfortably ran under the Olympic qualifying standard of 13.25 seconds twice, lowering his time to 13.11 seconds at a meet in Gainesville and eclipsing it by one-hundredth of a second two weeks later at the Drake Relays. Both times were the fastest he had run since 2015.
“It was nice to prove to myself that I still had what it took,” Jones said.
That Jones wasn’t healthy enough to improve those times at Trials is disappointing, but she chooses not to focus on that. She’s grateful for the opportunity to inspire other athletes and hear one more roar from the track-savvy crowd at Hayward Field.
“I’m so grateful to everyone who applauded me,” Jones said. “So much time passed that I thought people had forgotten. “It means a lot to me that people remember me and shout my name.”
