Fast Women: Historic 1500m closes out Olympic Trials

Weini Kelati kicks to a meaningful 10,000m win.

Jul 01, 2024

Issue 301, sponsored by Brooks

Nikki Hiltz reacts to winning the Olympic Trials 1500m in 3:55.33. *(Photo by Gregorio Denny)*

Nikki Hiltz leads the way in a record-breaking 1500m final

The Olympic Trials 1500m field was so deep that I knew it was likely that some athletes would run very fast and still not make the team. But I never would have guessed that making Team USA would take a 3:55. Fourth-place finisher Sinclaire Johnson ran 3:56.75, a 2.1-second PR, and she will not be going to Paris.

“I knew it was going to take breaking 4:00, so I kept telling myself, ‘I’m going to have to do something I’ve never done before,’” said Cory McGee. “But 3:55? I don’t know if I was expecting that.” McGee ran the race of her life. A sub-4:00 1500m had eluded her for years, but on Sunday night, she ran 3:57.44, a 2.9-second PR. That was only good enough for fifth place. The top six athletes all surpassed the Trials record Elle St. Pierre set in 2021.

St. Pierre wanted to make the race an honest one, and she took the lead from the start. Her coach, Mark Coogan, told her not to run the first 800m in 2:04—so she ran it in 2:05.

“Thank God I didn’t look at the clock the whole race,” said race winner Nikki Hiltz, who took PRed by 4.31 seconds. “If someone would have told me this morning that 3:56 doesn’t make the team, I don’t want to know that.”

St. Pierre kept her foot on the gas throughout, and she was surprised she still had four other athletes with her with 200m to go. Down the homestretch, St. Pierre, Emily Mackay, and Hiltz opened up a gap, and it was just a matter of figuring out which color medal each one would get.

It’s past 1:00 a.m. as I write this and I don’t have the brain capacity to describe what happened from there, but watch the race. It’s so good.

Historically, the best way to beat Hiltz has been to run the kick out of them. But last night, they looked like they could take anything that St. Pierre or Mackay could throw at them. Hiltz broke the tape in 3:55.33, and Mackay edged out St. Pierre for second, 3:55.90 to 3:55.99.

“My instructions before the race were, 'Don't try to make an Olympic team, try to win a race,’” said Hiltz. “And so that’s what I did.”

It was apparent from how Mackay’s season was going that she could make the team, but her trajectory has just been incredible. After the race, she talked about how training with St. Pierre, as part of New Balance Boston, makes her better.

And St. Pierre was pleased with how well the meet went overall. On day one, she ran the 5,000m prelims. On day four, she won the 5,000m. On days seven and eight, she ran the 1500m rounds. And on day 10, she ran a 1500m PR. “I think I could run faster in the 1500m if I didn’t have such tired legs,” she said afterwards. And Coogan told Citius Mag that he thinks she can run 3:52 or 3:53 if she has someone to follow. Both confirmed that St. Pierre will only run the 1500m in Paris.

Johnson was gutted to finish fourth. “Obviously we’re sending a really strong team to Paris, so I couldn’t be more happy for them,” she said. “But I’ve been fourth a lot and it hurts every time.” Johnson said this has been the hardest year of her life, and this is the third year in a row that she’s had a significant bone injury. This year’s injury was a femoral shaft stress reaction. “I’ve had so many fucking bone injuries,” she said.

Here’s the updated U.S. all-time 1500m list. The performances in bold happened last night:

1. Shelby Houlihan 3:54.99
2. Nikki Hiltz 3:55.33
3. Emily Mackay 3:55.90
4. Elle St. Pierre 3:55.99
5. Shannon Rowbury 3:56.29
6. Sinclaire Johnson 3:56.75
7. Mary Decker Slaney 3:57.12
8. Jenny Simpson 3:57.22
9. Suzy Favor Hamilton 3:57.40
10. Cory McGee 3:57.44
11. Elise Cranny 3:57.87
12. Heather MacLean 3:58.31
13. Addy Wiley 3:59.17
14. Anna Willard 3:59.38
15. Christin Wurth-Thomas 3:59:59

I am too tired to have any further insights about this race at the moment, but I thought some of what Hiltz had to say after the race was really touching. That part starts here. (Olympic Trials Results)

Thanks to Brooks for sponsoring Fast Women this month

Brooks is sponsoring Fast Women in July, too, and I am so thankful. First I mentioned Nia Akins in this space, and then she won the Olympic Trials 800m. Then I mentioned Jess McClain and she had a fantastic race in the 10,000m. (Read on for more on that.) Who should I talk about next?! I love Brooks’ commitment to supporting female distance runners, and I appreciated that seven of the 23 starters in the Trials 10,000m were Brooks athletes.

And they make great shoes and apparel, too. For a while now, I’ve been looking for a daily trainer that is more cushioned than what I was wearing, but isn’t a super shoe. I just started trying out the Glycerin 21, and I’m loving it so far. I’m not able to run a ton at the moment, so it’s going to take a little while to do the full test, but even just standing and walking in them, my feet feel noticeably less tired because of all of the cushioning. It might be strange to compare a pair of shoes to a floor mat—it’s been a long week—but we have an anti-fatigue mat in our kitchen and these shoes are like a portable version of that. (But a lot more attractive, of course.)

L-R: Parker Valby, Karissa Schweizer, and Weini Kelati. *(Photo by Gregorio Denny)*

In a tight 10,000m, Weini Kelati kicks to the win

The Olympic Trials 10,000m final was a full-circle moment for Weini Kelati. As a 17-year-old, she traveled to Eugene, Oregon, to represent Eritrea at the World U20 Championships at Hayward Field. After the race, she intentionally missed her flight home and sought asylum in the U.S. And on Saturday night, in the same spot, 10 years later, Kelati kicked to an Olympic Trials victory in the 10,000m and earned the chance to represent Team USA in Paris.

Right behind her, recent University of Florida graduate Parker Valby edged out Karissa Schweizer by 0.004 seconds to take second and put an exclamation point on a record-setting year. And Schweizer, who revealed after the race that she had developed a stress reaction in April, pulled off an impressive comeback to earn Olympic berths in both the 5,000m and the 10,000m (probably, more on that later), despite not being at her best.

With the temperature hovering around 78 degrees, the pack hit 400m in 79 seconds, at which point Susanna Sullivan made her way to the lead and stayed there for about 16 of the race’s 25 laps. She didn’t set a fast pace, relatively speaking, but it might have been even slower had she not been willing to take over. Sullivan went through 5,000m in 16:09, with most of the field still in it.

The pace didn’t pick up until Erika Kemp moved to the front with eight laps to go. That began to stretch out the field, but the pack really fell apart when Valby moved to the lead with about 2100m to go and dropped the pace from 74–75 seconds per lap to 70–71 seconds per lap. Schweizer and Kelati were the only athletes who were able to go with her, but I was so impressed with Kellyn Taylor in this moment, because she did the next best job of covering the move and ran in a solo fourth place for nearly a mile before anyone could catch her.

Valby set a punishing pace, but Schweizer and Kelati stayed right on her. With just over a lap to go, Schweizer moved to the front. And rather than describing the final lap, I’ll just let you watch it. There was no suspense regarding who would finish in the top three, but the race to determine their finish order was thrilling. Kelati earned the win, in 31:41.07, Valby fought back and just barely bested Schweizer for second, with both runners timed in 31:41.56. Kelati ran her last 1600m in 4:38.48 and the last lap in 66.76 seconds.

Jess McClain passed Taylor with less than two laps to go and closed well to earn her second fourth-place Trials finish of the year, after also placing fourth in the Marathon Trials. Amanda Vestri passed Taylor in the final 100m and took fifth in 32:11.00. And Taylor finished right behind, placing sixth in 32:12.02. Maggie Montoya (seventh, 32:13.26) and Erika Kemp (eighth, 32:21.84) earned the last two prize money spots. And Sullivan, who did so much of the pacesetting, finished 14th in 32:42.12.

Kelati has had an incredible year so far, setting the American half marathon record of 1:06:25, winning the USATF Cross Country Championships, finishing 15th at the World Cross Country Championships, and running huge PRs of 30:33.83 for 10,000m and 14:35.43 for 5,000m. But her victory in Eugene was another breakthrough, because not only did she win her first national title on the track, she did so in a sprint finish.

Kelati has had some tough races at Hayward Field. Three days after getting her U.S. citizenship (Washington Post), she competed in the 10,000m at the 2021 Olympic Trials, but running in hot conditions, she dropped out with eight laps to go. Also at Hayward, she missed making the world championships team by one spot in 2022 (5,000m) and 2023 (10,000m). Kelati hasn’t been known for her kick in the past, so it’s extra fun to see her rewrite the narrative this time out.

After the race, she talked about being a new version of herself on this trip to Eugene, and said she’s been working on both her kick and mindset. “I get pretty emotional every time I come [to Hayward Field] because I have all of the memories of when I left my family,” she said. “This year I just wanted to come out here, focus on my race, and perform well, because it’s been affecting every race I do here.” And that’s exactly what she did.

Valby said she was much more calm going into the 10,000m. “I was super, super nervous for the 5K, and I think that got the best of me,” she said. “If you took my heart rate before that race, it was probably in like the 500s. But before this race I was just having fun with it.”

She said she didn’t decide that she would run the 10,000m for sure until the day of the race, and she needed a couple days to regroup after the 5,000m. This time out, her plan was to avoid leading until one of her coaches, Will Palmer, told her to make a move. She intentionally didn’t know what time she needed to hit, because her coaches didn’t want her to fixate on it.

Schweizer was very emotional after the race as she talked about the tough road she faced this year. She said her return after Haglund’s surgery went pretty well, and she kind of pushed things because she was hoping to get the 10,000m standard out of the way. But the stress reaction came in April and she had to take a lot more time off than she was hoping. She said the setback made her nervous going into the Trials, and she’s excited to have five more weeks to gain fitness leading into the Olympic Games.

I’ve written all of this so far as if it’s a given that Valby and Schweizer are headed to Paris in the 10,000m. (Kelati is definitely going; she had already run faster than the Olympic standard of 30:40.) There are people who have taken the time to get familiar with the world rankings points system and I am not one of them. I don’t consider that to be a particularly interesting aspect of the sport, so I rely on other people when it comes to figuring out what a given performance is worth.

The consensus seems to be (Runner’s World) that Valby’s ranking will increase to 1,213 points and Schweizer’s will 1,209 points. That alone won’t be enough, but it looks like there will likely be enough scratches in front of them that they’ll be safe. We’ll know for sure by July 7.

McClain was pleased with her fourth-place finish, and it was a fantastic run. She clearly knows how to produce big performances when it counts. McClain qualified for the Track Trials in 2016, but she was unable to compete due to injury. And by the time 2021 rolled around, she had stepped away from high level running. She called Saturday’s run “the cherry on top of a great year” and said she chose to race the Track Trials “to rewrite a lot of the crappy history I’ve had on the track.” Now she plans to return to the roads, and she’ll run a fall marathon, assuming she isn’t needed as the Olympic marathon alternate.

Vestri was disappointed in her fifth-place finish, but what a year she has had. And it was exciting to see her racing in a Brooks kit. She said she signed with the company a few hours before the race, and that was the first time she tried on her race kit and shoes. “I haven’t tried their trainers yet, so I’ll probably put those on for my cooldown,” she said. Pete Rea, who has been her coach since last fall, will continue to coach her and it’s TBD what her relationship with ZAP Endurance, the team she has represented until now, will be. Vestri is planning to take a break now, and she’ll make her half marathon debut in the fall.

And I thought Taylor’s sixth-place finish was one of the best stories of this race. After running the Olympic Marathon Trials in February, she found out that she had a stress fracture in her femur and had to take 10 weeks off. She decided at the last minute to try for a Trials qualifier, and on the final weekend to qualify, she barely snuck into the field and was seeded 24th out of 24 entrants. So while I fully expected her to beat a bunch of people, I didn’t expect to see her quite so close to the front of the race, racing athletes who had much smoother buildups. And she mentioned in an Instagram post that she was solo parenting two of her four children while she was in Eugene.

It was tough to see Rachel Smith walk off the track around 7300m into the race. She has been dealing with a hamstring injury and she appeared to be limping.

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone reacts to breaking her own world record in the 400m hurdles. *(Photo by Gregorio Denny)*

Other Trials notes

There’s a reason the women’s 400mH was the last event of the Olympic Trials, and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone delivered, flying to a world record of 50.65. She shaved 0.03 seconds off of her previous record and said afterwards that she still sees places where she can improve her race. (Race replay)
Robyn Stevens (1:37:38), Miranda Melville (1:39:38), and Michelle Rohl (1:42:27) took the top three spots in the 20K race walk. I couldn’t tear myself away from the competition because it was exciting to see 58-year-old Rohl competing for a podium spot. She is a three-time Olympian in the race walk (’92, ’96, and ’00) and qualifying for the Trials was impressive enough, but it was mind blowing to see her finish so high. It turns out she wasn’t the oldest competitor at the Trials. Allen James, 60, who is also an Olympian, was in the men’s race walk, but she finished ahead of him. Multiple outlets, including People, are reporting that this “grandma” is headed to Paris, but none of the U.S. race walkers have the Olympic standard or the necessary ranking, as far as I can tell.
I love that hurdler Christina Clemons was sponsored by Doritos in Eugene, but the linked article also discusses how tough things can be financially for some of track & field’s best athletes. (Outside/Run link)
With Elle St. Pierre only running the 1500m in Paris, Parker Valby will now have the option to do the 5,000m/10,000m double. If she opts not to, the opportunity could trickle down to someone else.
Christina Aragon, who qualified for the Trials as a high school senior in 2016 but missed out in 2021, has been getting some nice coverage. She had a strong showing this time out, running a PR of 4:05.36 in the 1500m semifinals.
Katelyn Tuohy told Nancy Haggerty that she’s glad she decided to go to the Trials despite not being her fittest. She plans to get in a few more weeks of training and then do some racing in Los Angeles and, hopefully, Europe.

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