Lolo Jones, 41, resurfaces at US Olympic track and field events

EUGENE, Oregon — The oldest hurdler at the U.S. Olympic Trials cried herself to sleep the night before her opening race.

An unfortunate hamstring tear kept Lolo Jones out of training for six weeks and she feared she would not be able to compete.

Jones tested her hamstring last Saturday, which tightened after she cleared six hurdles.

Jones tried again on Thursday, but this time she didn’t even get that far before the pain forced her to stop.

It took more than courage and determination for Jones to drag herself to the starting line for her 100-meter hurdles preliminary round on Friday night. The 41-year-old credited the anti-inflammatory drug her medical team had administered.

“Toradol,” she said dryly. “The official sponsor of 40-year-olds!”

Those conditions help explain why Jones beamed with pride after her heat, despite trailing her rivals almost immediately after the gun went off. It was an achievement for her to cross the finish line in 14.86 seconds, even if it was almost two seconds slower than her pre-injury times.

Jones admitted she “ran a scary race” because she didn’t want to risk re-injuring her hamstring. The former U.S. national bobsled team brakewoman described Friday’s heat as scarier than hurtling down a winding, icy track at 90 miles per hour.

“That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my career,” Jones said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I would have rather crashed in a bobsled.”

Jones will get another chance to compete Saturday night despite her distant last-place finish. All 27 hurdlers who completed Friday’s preliminary heats advanced to the semifinals due to the expanded qualifying format and several injured athletes who opted not to run.

“If I wake up tomorrow and don’t need my cane, we’re going!” Jones joked, poking fun at the fact that some of her competitors weren’t even born when she first entered the Olympic qualifiers 20 years ago.

Although Jones failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, she was the favorite to claim gold four years later in Beijing. She was running clear of the field in the 100-meter hurdles final when she hit the ninth hurdle and tripped, falling to the ground in frustration after finishing seventh.

Jones qualified for the London Olympics four years later, but she failed to win her first medal, finishing fourth in the 100 hurdles final. She did not make the U.S. teams for the 2013 or 2015 World Championships, and did not compete at the 2016 Olympic Trials.

By then, Jones had gone from experimenting with bobsledding to pursuing it with the same passion she had previously shown in hurdling. She represented the U.S. at the Sochi Olympics and was part of teams that won two gold medals at the world championships.

When USA Bobsled officials cut her from the 2022 Olympic team, Jones was furious about the snub. She felt that “politics” contributed to her exclusion, that she was “pushed out” because of her age.

A stubborn unwillingness to let anyone else decide how her athletic career would end led Jones back to the sport that first catapulted her to stardom. It wasn’t enough for Jones to simply start training for the 100 hurdles again. She set herself the audacious goal of becoming the first hurdler in her 40s to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials.

In April, Jones twice ran comfortably under the 13.25-second Olympic qualifying standard, improving to a time of 13.11 seconds at a meet in Gainesville and then bettering that time by a hundredth of a second two weeks later at the Drake Relays. Both times were the fastest she had run since 2015.

“It was just nice to prove to myself that I was still capable,” Jones said.

That Jones wasn’t healthy enough to better those times at Trials is disappointing, but she chooses not to focus on that. She’s grateful for the chance to inspire other athletes and to hear the roar of the track-savvy Hayward Field crowd one more time.

“I’m so thankful for everyone who cheered me on,” Jones said. “It’s been so long that I thought people might have forgotten. It means the world to me that people are remembering me and calling my name.”