EUGENE, Oregon — The oldest hurdler at 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 worried she wouldn’t be able to compete.
Jones tested her hamstring last Saturday. She got cramped after she had taken six hurdles.
Jones tried again on Thursday, but this time she didn’t even make it that far before the pain forced her to stop.
It took more than courage and determination for Jones to get to the starting line for her preliminary heat in the 100 meter hurdles on Friday evening. The 41-year-old credited the anti-inflammatory drug administered by her medical team.
“Toradol, she looked deadpan. “The official sponsor of 40 year olds!”
These 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, even though that was almost two seconds slower than the times she ran before her injury.
Jones admitted she “ran a scary race” because she didn’t want to risk re-injuring her hamstring. The former U.S. national bobsled team brakewoman described Friday’s heat as scarier than hurtling down a winding, icy track at 90 miles per hour.
“That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my career,” Jones said. “I know that sounds crazy, but I would have had a bobsled accident any day.”
Jones will get another chance to compete on Saturday night, despite her distant last place finish. All 27 hurdlers who completed Friday’s preliminaries advanced to the semifinals due to the extended qualifying format and several injured athletes who opted not to run.
“If I wake up tomorrow and don’t need my cane, we’re going!” Jones joked, poking fun at the fact that some of her competitors weren’t even born when she first appeared at the Olympic Trials 20 years ago.
Although Jones failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, she was the favorite to claim gold four years later in Beijing. She was running clear of the field in the 100-meter hurdles final when she hit the ninth hurdle and tripped, falling to the ground in frustration after finishing seventh.
Jones qualified for the London Olympics four years later, but she failed to win her first medal, finishing fourth in the 100 hurdles final. She did not make the U.S. teams for the 2013 or 2015 world championships and did not compete in the 2016 Olympic Trials.
By then, Jones had gone from bobsledding to chasing it with the same passion she previously showed in the hurdles. She represented the U.S. at the Sochi Olympics and was part of teams that won two World Championship gold medals.
When U.S. bobsled officials left her off the 2022 Olympic team, Jones fumed over the criticism. She felt that “politics” contributed to her exclusion, that she was “pushed out” 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 return to training for the 100 hurdles. She set herself the audacious goal of becoming the first hurdler in her 40s to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials
In April, Jones twice comfortably ran under the Olympic qualifying standard of 13.25 seconds, dropping a time of 13.11 seconds at a meet in Gainesville and eclipsing it by one-hundredth of a second at the Drake Relays two weeks later. Both times were the fastest she had run since 2015.
“It was just fun to prove to myself that I still had what it takes,” 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 is grateful for the opportunity to inspire other athletes and hear from the track-conscious Hayward Field crowd once again.
“I’m so grateful for everyone who cheered for me,” Jones said. “It was so long ago that I thought maybe people had forgotten about it. It means a lot to me that people remember me and shout my name.”
