Right before the start of the women’s 5,000-meter semifinal, on the first day of the How to Watch the 2024 U.S. Olympic Track Trials, Abbey Cooper changed her game plan in favor of a more aggressive race strategy. She decided to chase the Olympic standard of 15:10, no matter how the race played out.
And on Friday night, she made it happen with a fearless, solo effort in Eugene, Oregon.
How to watch the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials | Published: Jun 19, 2021 9:15 AM EDT
The 2016 Olympian won the first heat in 15:07.80—three seconds faster than the Olympic standard required to compete for Team USA in Tokyo, and 16 seconds faster than the next closest finisher in the two-heat semifinal round.
Most runners opt to conserve as much energy as possible through the rounds of a championship, saving their best for the final. But Cooper, 29, who missed the time standard by three seconds earlier this season, went on a mission to clock that time after learning that the weather on the day of the final might not be ideal for a quick run.
“Literally 45 minutes before the race, my coach, Chris Layne, came over and said [the weather on the day of] the final is going to be 97 degrees. If it’s slow, I might want you to consider going for [the Olympic standard],” Cooper told reporters in a virtual mixed zone. “Not an ideal amount of time to think about it, but I’m glad [he] mentioned it. 1200 [meters] in, I felt okay and knew I had to go out on a limb. That was Jesus helping me. I wouldn’t have done that if Coach Layne didn’t say anything.”
After Cooper pulled away from her competitors around the 1200-meter mark, she blazed through the 3,000-meter split in 9:11, six seconds ahead of the chase pack. For the last 2,000 meters, she ran between 70 and 72 seconds per lap until the bell. With 400 meters remaining, she switched gears and covered the last lap in 68 seconds for an overall time that was the fastest she had run in six years.
While Cooper admitted she was fearful of losing her lead, she felt confident in executing a top-five finish, which would automatically advance her to the final on Monday.
“You never know for sure if you’re going to be able to hold it,” Cooper said. “That was scary. But the worst that could happen is that I would get passed and maybe have exerted myself a bit but still be top-five.”
went viral after helping up a fellow competitor Less than an hour before her race, Cooper changed up her race planand executed it perfectly following a collision during the 5,000-meter heats at the Rio Olympics, but she suffered from a torn ACL and a torn meniscus. She has been working towards coming back to top form ever since, and Friday’s race showed great progress.
“The past five years since Rio have been so much harder than I could have ever imagined,” Cooper said. “I kept going because this is a calling for me. I love this sport but the joy of this is sometimes robbed when you’re in a cyclical pattern of injury. It feels so good to feel within myself doing something like that. Praise God.”
Heading into the championship, Cooper’s season’s best was 15:13 from the USATF Grand Prix on April 24. She credited a shift in training and three altitude training stints with helping her prepare for the postponed Olympic year.
“We’ve minimized my volume a bit,” she said. “We’ve sacrificed some volume for the sake of consistency. I had been lacking that for a few years. I had to dial back and do some more cross training.”
For now, Cooper is focused on recovery in preparation for the 5,000-meter final on Monday night. If she makes the Olympic team, she’s aiming for another stepping stone in Tokyo this summer.
“I have goals of going back to the Olympics multiple times and having a different experience,” Cooper said. “I’m grateful for it, but that was a supernatural experience. I desire and feel called to keep going and return to that stage in a different capacity. I don’t feel resentful of what happened there. I just want to have another experience and really add to it.”
Taylor Dutch is a writer and editor living in Austin, Texas, and a former NCAA track athlete who specializes in fitness, wellness, and endurance sports coverage. Her work has appeared in Runner’s World, SELF, Bicycling, Outside, and Podium Runner.
