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How the U.S. Olympic Track Team Is Selected hamstring four weeks ago, she tried to go over a hurdle in practice and it hurt so much she couldn’t clear a single one.
With the first round of the 100-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Trials on Friday, nerves and anxiety flooded in. She thought she might have to pull out.
But Jones, at 41 years old, decided to start the race. The result wasn’t pretty—she fell behind shortly after the gun and finished in 14.86, noticeably behind her competitors—but she qualified for the semifinals since the entire field advanced.
“That was terrifying, what I just did,” she said after the race. “That’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my career.”
“For me to get on that start line and get through all 10 hurdles was a huge victory,” she said, choking up.
But despite the pain—and the threat that she could re-injure herself—Jones, aided by Toradol and help from the Team USA medical team, wanted to race to inspire older, and younger, athletes.
“I hope to show them you can still be in your 40s and be good enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials,” she said. “And I hope someone after me is going to be good enough to throw down in their 40s.”
Jones said she is the first woman in her 40s to qualify for the Olympic Trials in the 100-meter hurdles, and there’s no reason why she can’t compete at a high level at her current age.
“The sports science is getting better,” she said. “Hell, Tom Brady didn’t retire until he’s 45. I hope these kids can just see me and be like, ‘You know what? My world’s not ending if I don’t make this Olympic team, there’s longevity.’”
Jones was a force in the short hurdles for much of the past two decades. She made two Olympic teams in the 100-meter hurdles in 2008 and 2012 and nearly won gold in Beijing but clipped the second-to-last hurdle and crossed the line in seventh. She also competed at the Winter Olympics in the bobsled in 2014.
From 2016 to 2022, Jones raced sparingly on the track. But this past year, she’s made a comeback, competing at some lowkey meets before running a 100-meter hurdles season’s best of 13.10 at the Drake Relays in April to qualify her for the Trials.
“When I came back to track, and I was running 100-meter times the same time as I was running in my twenties, I knew I still had speed,” she said. “And it was just nice to prove to myself that, you know, I still had what it takes to be an elite athlete.”
Jones joked that she was so anxious before the final that she told her bobsled teammates that if she had the choice between lining up for the hurdles or crashing down the “scariest bobsled track” at 90 miles an hour, she would pick the crash.
“I had no clue if I would blow my hamstring out,” she said.
She noted that the injury she suffered is fairly common for a hurdler and said it wasn’t related to old age.
Jones doesn’t know yet if she’ll run in the semifinals, which will take place Saturday at 5:04 p.m. PT. She’s going to wait and see how her hamstring feels first.
“If I wake up and I’m super sore, I might have to pull out,” she said. “But if we’re good, I’m gonna go for it. But I have to get rid of this fear and run strong.”
Theo Kahler is the news editor for Runner’s World. He is a former all-conference collegiate runner who’s based in Easton, PA. Previously, he worked as the newsletters editor at Runner's World, Bicycling, and Popular Mechanics.
