EUGENE, Ore. — The oldest hurdler at the U.S. Olympic Trials cried himself to sleep the night before his opening race.
An untimely hamstring tear forced Lolo Jones to miss six weeks of training and fear he might not be able to compete.
Jones tested his hamstring last Saturday after completing six hurdles and it tightened up.
Jones tried again on Thursday, but this time the pain caused him to stop before getting very far.
It took more than just courage and determination for Jones to step onto the starting line for the 100-meter hurdles heats on Friday night. The 41-year-old credited the anti-inflammatory medication his medical team administered.
“Toradol,” she said with a straight face, “the official sponsor of 40 years old!”
This helps explain why Jones was beaming with pride after the race, even though she fell behind her fellow runners as soon as the starting gun went off: Crossing the line in 14.86 seconds was still an accomplishment, even if it was nearly two seconds slower than her pre-injury time.
Jones, a former brake man for the U.S. national bobsled team, admitted he “ran the race scared” because he didn't want to risk reinjuring his hamstring. He said Friday's heat was more frightening than hurtling at 90 mph down the winding, icy course.
“That was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me in my career,” Jones said. “I know that sounds insane, but I'd rather have a bobsled accident than do that.”
Jones finished far behind in last place but has another chance to compete on Saturday night. All 27 hurdler competitors who qualified on Friday advanced to the semifinals due to an expanded qualifying format and the withdrawal of several athletes with injuries.
“If we wake up tomorrow and don't need a cane, we're going!” Jones joked, mocking the fact that when she first appeared at the Olympic Trials 20 years ago, some of her competitors hadn't even been born yet.
Jones missed out on qualifying for the 2004 Olympics but was the favorite to win gold in Beijing four years later. He was leading the field in the 100m hurdles final when he stumbled at the ninth hurdle, finished in seventh place and slammed his head into the ground in frustration.
Jones qualified for the London Olympics four years later but fell short of her first medal, finishing fourth in the 100m hurdles final. She was not selected for the U.S. teams for the 2013 or 2015 World Championships and did not compete at the 2016 Olympic Trials.
By that time, Jones had moved from dabbling in bobsledding to approaching the sport with the same passion she had previously shown in hurdling: she represented the United States at the Sochi Olympics and was part of the team that won two gold medals at the world championships.
Jones was outraged when USA Bobsled dropped her from the 2022 Olympic team, feeling that “politics” played a role in her exclusion and that she was “excluding” because of her age.
Jones' stubborn refusal to let others decide when her athletic career would end led her to return to the sport that had brought her stardom. But it wasn't enough for her to just resume training for the 100m hurdles. She set an audacious goal: to become the first hurdler in her 40s to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Jones twice comfortably slid under the Olympic qualifying mark of 13.25 seconds in April, shaving off a 13.11 mark in Gainesville and then beating that mark by a hundredth of a second two weeks later at the Drake Relays. Both times were her best since 2015.
“It was good to prove I still have it,” Jones said.
While it's disappointing that Jones wasn't healthy enough to improve at the trials, she chose not to focus on that. She's grateful for the opportunity to inspire others and hear one more cheer from the knowledgeable Hayward Field crowd.
“I'm so grateful for all of you that came out to support me,” Jones said. “I thought I might have forgotten about it for so long, and it means the world to me that you all remembered me and yelled my name.”
