Lolo Jones hasn’t returned to China since 2008, since one bad step in what was then the biggest race of her life cost her an Olympic gold medal.
The following written content from Tim Reynolds
Lolo Jones hasn’t returned to China since 2008, since one bad step in what was then the biggest race of her life cost her an Olympic gold medal.
She’s never wanted to go back.
Her stance might change in 2022.
Jones — the longtime U.S. hurdles star who decided to add sliding to her resume a few years ago — is back with USA Bobsled, making this season’s 10-woman national team as a push athlete. That puts her squarely in the mix for the next Olympics, which just happen to be in Beijing, the city where that misstep in the 100-meter hurdle final happened 12 years ago.
How perfect.
“I would love to have the biggest failure of my life turned into the biggest success, and I would love for people to be encouraged by that persistence, determination, all these cliche things that Olympians say,” Jones told The Associated Press.
“And so, can I make it happen? I don’t know, but we are in the home stretch. We’re in the last part of this long, long race and I’m going to do my hardest to return to Beijing, the place that has hurt my career the most and turn it around.”
It’s not a farfetched plan. In her most recent four World Cup appearances — in fairness, the last of those was nearly three years ago — she helped the U.S. win a medal, two of them gold.
Jones went to the Olympics for track in 2008 and again at London in 2012, then made the bobsled Olympic team for the Sochi Games in 2014. She withdrew from the 2016 U.S. Olympic track trials while recovering from hip surgery and wasn’t picked for the 2018 Olympic bobsled team. She was training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which have been delayed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
So, she’s back in bobsled. And at 38, she knows that Olympic window is closing.
“I would say she really has a real chance,” USA Bobsled and Skeleton CEO Aron McGuire said. “She knows what it takes for her specifically but she knows what it takes generally to be at a point where she is one of the top athletes in the world in whatever she is doing, whether it’s hurdling or pushing a bobsled. And she has that drive. She has that commitment to it and that passion that will certainly put her in a position to be one of the top athletes push athletes if that’s what she puts her mind to.” Read more from ABC News.
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