The brutally unforgiving – and brutally fair – contest to qualify for the Olympics

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean the US Olympic trials aren’t out to get you. There are no excuses, no exceptions and usually no complaints. Although, sometimes even the best athletes are left thinking, why did it have to be me?

In the now-52 years since it was agreed the only right and equitable way of deciding who goes to the Olympics is the top three finishers in their category at the national championships (who also have the qualifying standard), the US system has been accepted as brutally unforgiving. And mostly brutally fair. Such is the depth and quality of athletes born in the USA that anything else would be mangled in the subjective or the politicking.

It’s also ruthlessly simple, mirroring the very essence and occasion of the once-every-four-years Olympic spectacle. There is no audition. As old Baron de Coubertin might have preached, the most important thing about the US Olympic trials is not the winning or the taking part, it’s finishing in the top three.

Only sometimes, fair is unfair. Ask Carl Lewis, or Dan O’Brien, or ask Athing Mu.

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Mu is the one of the biggest stars in US athletics right now, photographed in her Team USA kit on the cover of this month’s Sports Illustrated, and unquestionably one of their most talented, all of which made the sight of her crashing out of the women’s 800m final earlier this week so unfathomable. Recently turned 22, Mu was just 19 when three years ago, at the delayed Tokyo Olympics, she won the 800m gold medal in 1:55.21 – faster than the 1:55.28 which Caster Semenya ran to win in Rio 2016. That’s how good she is.

After also winning the world title in 2022, Mu was looking to become the first woman in Olympic history to defend her 800m title in Paris next month, but that dream ended halfway around the first lap of Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon when, bunched in the middle of the nine-woman final, she clipped a fellow runner from behind and fell to the track. Games over.

Mu did get up and chase in vain, before finishing ninth in 2:19.69. If she somehow felt some paranoia around her event, that was understandable too. Three years ago, Nia Akins fell on the back straight, and so ended her dream of going to Tokyo. At the 2016 Trials, Alysia Montano fell on the final turn, missing out on her Rio dream. In a simple twist of that fate, Akins won this time around, running a lifetime best of 1:57.36.

In Tokyo, Mu was also part of the US women’s 4x400m relay which won gold, but there will be no Olympic ticket this time. Just like Carl Lewis, who missed out on the 100m in Barcelona in 1992, despite being the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder, after he finished sixth in the trials. Just like Dan O’Brien, who also missed out in 1992, despite being the decathlete world champion – just weeks after signing a multimillion-dollar deal with Reebok, he failed to clear a height in the pole vault.

Athletes from most other countries don’t always appreciate how good they have it when it comes to their Olympic selection. Even if there is that similar depth and quality in some events – think Jamaican sprinting, or Kenyan distance running – there is usually some way to facilitate the best athletes. It might be the top two finishers at their national championships, leaving the third spot open to a “wild card” of sorts, or in some cases even an Olympic preselection.

In the now-152 consecutive years of our National Championships (first staged on July 7th, 1873, at College Park in Trinity College Dublin), rarely has any Olympic selection been decided on who finishes first, second or third, although some do still stand out vividly.

Back in 1996, a few weeks before the Atlanta Olympics, the men’s 10,000m turned out to be a winner-takes-all showdown between Noel Berkeley and Sean Dollman. At the time, Berkeley and Dollman had both run the Olympic B-standard, meaning only one of them could go to Atlanta, as the then selection criteria allowed for.

Affectionately known as the King of the Roads, Berkeley was at times equally dominant on the track, winning that national 10,000m title for three years in row, from 1993 to1995. Berkeley would often arrive at the Morton Stadium on his racing motorcycle, psyching out many of his combatants by that process alone, and, having already run the Olympic 10,000m in Barcelona in 1992, he was marginally fancied to win.

Although he set the pace for most of the 25 laps, it was Dollman, the South African-born and American-based runner, who darted past when it mattered, winning the title and his second Olympic ticket.

“I feel like I’ve been shot in the back,” Berkeley said afterwards, although he did come back to win three more 10,000m titles in a row, from 1997-1999, equalling the record six won by Cork’s Donie Walsh in the 1960s and 1970s.

My earliest memory of an Irish athlete missing out on Olympic selection goes back to the 1984 National Championships in Santry, in advance of the LA Games, and that didn’t come down to where Eamonn Coghlan finished in the 5,000m, but the fact that he didn’t finish at all.

Having won the world championship title in Helsinki the previous year, and having finished fourth in the two previous Olympics, in 1976 and 1980, LA had been billed as Coghlan’s opportunity at redemption, although his 1984 season had already been disrupted by injury on top of injury.

Still, the Olympic selectors gave him the chance to “prove his fitness”, as it was generally politely put, and Coghlan lined up for the 5,000m in Santry that day knowing this was his last chance or bust. At some point, maybe about halfway, he dropped out, leaving John Treacy, already selected to run the marathon in LA despite having never raced the distance before (imagine that!), to win in 13:33.59.

I found a photograph this week of Coghlan limping off the track that day and being consoled by Noel Carroll, the two-time Olympian in the 800m and fellow graduate of Villanova. Coghlan’s hurt and anguish is written all over his face, and his hand is resting on Carroll’s shoulder.

There is also a gentle smile on Carroll’s face, as if to say such is sport, sometimes fair is unfair.

40 years on, that picture speaks louder than any words: Why did it have to be me?