Reigning Olympics 800m champion Athing Mu has announced her next race after a disappointing performance at the US National Olympic Qualifiers, where a fall in the first 200m of the final cost her a quota in the US team for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
At the US Olympic trials, Athing Mu was off to a great start in the preliminaries and semifinal, finishing third in the former and winning the latter. She stumbled in the final and ended up finishing ninth. She appealed to have the race re-run but USATF threw out her appeal. At the start of the 2024 season, she had been nursing a hamstring injury and had not raced prior to the US Olympic trials.
The American athlete will start on July 19 in Gainesville, Florida. The 22-year-old American is also the 800m world champion from Eugene 2022.
Athing Mu is the youngest woman in history to hold Olympic and world titles in an individual track and field event. At the age of 19, she won the gold medal in the 800m at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, breaking a national record and a continental under-20 record. She took a second gold as part of the women’s 4x400m relay. She was the 800m 2022 World champion, becoming the first American woman to win the world championship title over the distance. Athing Mu holds the world under-20 record in the women’s indoor 800m, which she set in early 2021. She also holds the world U20 best in the indoor 600m, set in 2019 when she was 16 years of age. Her time is the third fastest ever run indoors.
