TOKYO — An hour after her convincing victory in the Olympic Games 800-meter final Tuesday night, teenager Athing Mu still couldn’t quite get her head around the fact that she was an Olympic champion, talking about the moment like it was something abstract, or as if she was the gold medalist only in theory.
“It sounds awesome,” she said. “I kind of suck at taking everything all in, so I feel like this really won’t kick in until I am home. I will be like ‘Oh, my God, I actually did that.’”
She did, and it was even better than it sounds.
Mu, 19, running with the poise of a vastly more experienced athlete, claimed the gold medal with a wire-to-wire victory, finishing in 1-minute 55.21 seconds, a new American and World Junior (Under-20) record and a mark faster than all but one of the last nine Olympic finals.
The silver medal was taken by another 19-year-old, Keely Hodginson, whose 1:55.88 broke the British record. Raevyn Rogers, the former Oregon NCAA champion, secured the bronze medal with a late surge (1:56.71).
“And there’s not just one 19-year-old in the race, there is two, which is unbelievable,” Hodginson said. “Hopefully it stems for a good competitive 10-15 years ahead and faster times on the horizon.”
Mu and Hodginson weren’t the only teenagers prompting raised eyebrows at the Olympic Stadium on Tuesday.
Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah completed her sweep of the 100 and 200 gold medals at consecutive Olympics, blowing away a 200 field that besides herself had won a combined 24 Olympic or World Championship sprint medals, 12 of them gold.
Thompson-Herah’s winning time of 21.53 was the second-fastest in history. Namibia’s Christine Mboma, 18, took the silver with a late surge at 21.81, another World Junior record. Gabby Thomas, the Olympic Trials winner, held on for the bronze medal in 21.87.
Mboma set a string of African senior and World Junior records in the 400 earlier this season, including a 48.54 clocking on June 30, the world’s fastest time this season by a runner of any age by more than a half-second.
She would have been on a short list of gold medal favorites for the Tokyo 400. Instead, she and countrywoman Beatrice Masilingi were determined by World Athletics, track and field’s global governing body, to produce above-normal amounts of testosterone due to Difference in Sex Development (DSD), a condition in which hormones, genes, reproductive organs can show both female and male characteristics. Under World Athletics guidelines female athletes producing above normal testosterone levels are prohibited from competing in events from 400 meters to the mile at the international level unless they take testosterone suppressing drugs for six months.
Because she didn’t have enough time to meet the guidelines in time to run the 400 in Tokyo, Mboma opted to move down to the 200.
“I just focused on the 200 meters,” she said. “I just wanted to keep my head down and focus on that. Now I have got a medal. I am happy.”
Like Mu, Armand Duplantis, the 21-year-old Louisiana-born and bred pole vaulter who competes for his mother’s native Sweden, also had trouble coming to terms with his victory.
Duplantis was perfect through 19 feet, 9 inches. Chris Nilsen, the Olympic Trials winner, was second at 19-7 with Brazil’s Thiago Braz, the defending Olympic champion, third at 19-3.
“It’s a surreal feeling, really, I still don’t know how to explain it,” Duplantis, who goes by Mondo, said. “It’s something I’ve wanted for so long and now that it’s finally here, and I finally did it, it’s so crazy.”
The gold medal secured, Duplantis took three attempts at raising his world record a half-inch to 20-3¾, coming oh, so close on the first try, knocking the bar off with his chest on his way down.
“It shows that he is still a human, but the things he is doing are crazy,” said France’s Renaud Lavillenie, the 2012 Olympic champion, who was eighth Tuesday.
The Frenchman could have just as easily been talking about Mu.
“She’s the best that has ever been,” said Pat Henry, her coach at Texas A&M.
Mu’s family is South Sudanese and fled to New Jersey from Sudan’s civil war in 2001. A year later, Mu was born, the second youngest of seven children. Like her siblings before her, she joined a track club as a pre-schooler.
“It was my turn,” she said.
By her junior year, she was among the best in the world. Not just for her age but for any age.
Mu, then 16, won the 2019 U.S. Indoor 600 title in an American record 1:23.57, the world’s second-fastest mark ever.
After the pandemic wiped out 2020, Mu picked right up with her record-breaking ways this past winter, adding the collegiate indoor 600 standard to her record collection in only her second college race.
Skipping the 800 at the NCAA Championships in Eugene in June, Mu won the 400, breaking her own collegiate record with a 49.57 mark, and then came back to clock a 48.85 split in the 4×400 relay. She was so far ahead in the 400, the rest of the field wasn’t even visible on ESPN’s broadcast when she crossed the finish line.
She capped the season with three of the five fastest collegiate outdoor 400s of all time. Her NCAA time is the fastest by an American in 2021 and was nearly a half-second faster than Wadeline Jonathas’ winning time at the Olympic Trials 400 final (50.02).
Mu then gave up her remaining college eligibility signing a contract with Nike that will reportedly make her the highest-paid athlete in the sport. She moved back up to the 800 at the Trials, winning in a world-leading 1:56.07.
Having started the season aiming for a medal in Tokyo, Mu began to focus on gold after the Trials.
“I wasn’t really putting gold on that,” she said, “but as it got closer to the final today, I was like, ‘Yeah, we want gold.’”
On Tuesday she was in charge the whole race, leading the field past 200 in 27.4, the bell in 57.9. With 200 to go Jamaica’s Natatoya Goule and Ethiopia’s Habitam Alemu moved on to her shoulder.
But any hope the field had of beating the teenager was short-lived. Mu surged and continued to pull away all the way to the tape.
Still getting used to being Olympic champion, Mu was asked about taking on what has long been considered the untouchable world record of 1:53.28, set by Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983, in an era of state-sponsored doping by Eastern bloc countries and almost nonexistent drug testing.
“I definitely think it is possible, especially with the athletes competing,” Mu said. Like Keely, she is amazing and only 19. I am sure in the next couple of years we are definitely going to push each other. That record is going to go down, just because we are good athletes.”