On July 6, Athing Mu made only her second appearance on a track in 2023, when she raced the first round of the 1500 meters at the U.S. Track & Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
Mu, an 800-meter specialist, ran 4:10.33, an almost 6-second PR in the 1500 meters. She finished third in her heat and advanced to the final, which will be held on July 8.
But Mu, who is 21, made no assurances she would run the final. When reporters asked her after her race, she gave a noncommittal “we’ll see.”
Her only other race so far this year has been an 800 she ran in June in New York, which she won easily in 1:58.73.
Which begs the question: Why has one of the sport’s biggest stars been racing so infrequently this year?
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“This year has been so great for me mentally,” she said. “It’s been such a relief. I haven’t put myself out there as much. Coming into these meets, whether it’s a small competition, big competition, there’s just so much pressure just overall. You know, you’re overthinking your race days before you’re even out there. So I mean, just the overall pressure that you feel when it comes to competing is a lot and so I think, you know, the past few years have been a lot for me.”
To review: Mu’s résumé is already long. She has two Olympic gold medals from 2021, one in the 800 meters, the other in the 4x400-meter relay.
The 1:55.04 she ran in the 800 in 2021 at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon, is the American record. She has a World Championships gold medal from 2022 in Eugene.
And she hasn’t had much of a break from the spotlight.
When the pandemic hit, it set back the schedule of international meets, pushing the 2020 Olympics to 2021 and the 2021 World Championships to 2022. Normally pros would have had an “off” year from global meets in 2022, but that quiet year was in 2020, due to COVID, when Mu was still in high school.
In 2023, regularly scheduled international meets have resumed, and the World Championships again take place in August in Budapest, Hungary. Mu, by virtue of winning the world title in 2022, has an automatic bye into the event at Worlds.
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So Mu is essentially making 2023 a down year for her, racing sparingly until August when she’ll be in Budapest.
But her decision to focus on training at the expense of racing comes at a cost for the track in the United States, where the sport struggles for viewers and fans.
The U.S. championships aren’t on NBC at all this year—they’re being streamed on USATF.tv and broadcast on CNBC. Top sprinter Noah Lyles, when asked about the lack of NBC coverage, said, “It hurts.”
The ticketed spectator total for the first day of the U.S. meet was announced as 5,311. While 5,311 people may have had tickets to the meet, they certainly didn’t all show up at once, if at all.
What are the obligations of the highest-profile runners to try to promote a sport whose audience appears to be shrinking? It’s an ongoing question in track.
Lyles, the American record-holder in the 200 meters and reigning world champion, has already raced 15 times this year. Top sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson has raced eight times. World record-holder in the 400-meter hurdles Sydney McLaughlin, who, like Mu, is coached by Bobby Kersee in Los Angeles, has raced four times.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, who expects to win every time he lines up for 1500 meters, has raced 10 times.
But Mu said after her run at the U.S. champs, she wanted to be her “21-year-old self” during this unrelenting series of meets. If racing less frequently this year helps her do that, that’s her prerogative.
“We’ve got two years, three years basically, championships and championships back to back,” she said. “It’s a lot. We wanted to take a step back and just enjoy where we were at, you know?”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
