(Editor’s note: Fractions of a second or a slight misstep during the Olympics can alter the career, the legacy and the earning potential of athletes. The Associated Press spoke with athletes about how they prepare to avoid those disappointments and the impact of those lifechanging finishes.)
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Mike Conley spent most of the 1980s ranked among the top triple jumpers in the world. So, heading into the U.S. Olympic trials in ’88, there was very little thought given to the idea he wouldn’t finish in the top three and make the trip to Seoul.
In a sport embedded inside an Olympic world where gold medals can be won and careers can be made by the most minuscule of fractions — of seconds or inches or centimeters — what toppled Conley’s hopes had nothing to do with a measuring tape.
It was a pair of baggy shorts, the likes of which he had never worn in a track meet before, that did him in. Conley recalls video replays that showed the breeze that was kicked up by the vented flaps on the sides of his shorts created a barely perceptible mark in the sand nearly a foot behind where he landed.
Officials measured Conley’s jump from the mark the shorts made. It cost him precious centimeters and he finished fourth, one spot out of the Olympics.
“Devastating,” the now-61-year-old dad of Timberwolves guard Mike Conley Jr. called it. “I wasn’t jumping bad. I was in a good place then. I made all the right physical decisions. But I made some dumb mental mistakes.”
Conley’s story serves as one of hundreds of examples of how the most minute details can change not only the result of a single race or contest, but also can have a huge impact on the lives of athletes whose make-or-break moments — their chance for a Wheaties box or a six-figure endorsement — come only once every four years, or sometimes only once in a lifetime.
Over 17 days in Paris this summer, fractions — often gained or lost due to the smallest of details that often only the athletes and their coaches might notice — will make the difference between first, second, third — or no medal at all.
Conley’s tale had a storybook ending. Motivated by the freak failure, to say nothing of the silver medal at the 1984 Games where he went in as the favorite, he came back in 1992 and won Olympic gold in Barcelona.
“I always say that experience is gained by bad judgment,” said Conley, who now serves as chair of high performance for USA Track and Field. “And in ’92, I put it all together and won gold.”
Heartbreak, dollar signs
Not everyone gets that second chance. Those who do spend years reviewing what happened and reworking their training and mindset to make sure the fraction doesn’t beat them again.
Rower Michelle Sechser finished fifth with Molly Reckford at the Tokyo Games in 2021 in a race in which the top five spots were squeezed less than one second apart. Sechser says she uses that agonizing loss as fuel for a return Olympic trip this year.
“I visualize that moment,” she said, retelling the story with tears welling in her eyes. “Even saying it now chokes me up to think about what that podium moment would be like. And it’s enough to carry me through.”
Most Olympic athletes know what they’re signing up for when they commit to a life where their sport is in the spotlight once every four years.
Certainly, all those sprinters and rowers and BMX cyclists keep toiling away in non-Olympic years, with world and national championships and regular stops on their individual sports’ circuits keeping them very much in good form. But there is only one Olympics, and they know it.
“There’s a lot of money on the line when you’re competing in an Olympics,” said Nevin Harrison, a gold medalist in canoe three years ago in Tokyo. “If I get first versus fourth in this race, which is a matter of point-3 seconds, that determines what apartment I live in next year.
“It’s an added pressure,” she said. “It’s not just: ‘Oh, people are going to be really excited versus disappointed.’ It’s more like: ‘Do I pay my bills or not?’”
Says long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall, who heads into the Olympics undefeated in seven meets this year: “I’m a goal-oriented person, which is cool, but at the same time, it’s almost kind of degrading for us. Where it’s, like, one centimeter. Like, what could I have done to get that one centimeter? It could’ve been eating right, it could’ve been sleeping right, it could’ve been nothing. I don’t know.”
Back in 2008, American gymnast Jonathan Horton put down what he called the best high bar routine of his life in event finals at the Olympics. It earned him a silver medal in an oh-so-close .025-point loss to Zou Kai of China. A small step on the dismount was the difference between first and second.
He’s at peace with the result, but well aware of what that tiny step cost him.
“That .025 was the difference between a seven-figure paycheck for me, which I heard from people is what I could have gotten for a massive sponsorship deal with a gold medal,” said Horton, who is 38 and works in insurance sales in Texas.
One one-hundredth
The blink of an eye takes an average of .1 seconds — one tenth of a second.
Two of the biggest races of 100-meter sprinter Justin Gatlin’s life were decided by .01 seconds — one one-hundredth of a second.
The American sprinter’s colorful, sometimes controversial career took off in 2004 — before Usain Bolt was a household name — thanks to a .01-second victory over Portugal’s Francis Obikwelu at the Athens Olympics.
In replays of the race, you can see Gatlin pumping his fists in perfect form, before he begins a lean forward in the final steps — his chest breaking the plane of the finish line in Lane 3 just that split second before Obikwelu crosses in Lane 5. Gatlin ran the 100 meters in 9.85 seconds.
“For me, it was a lifechanging event,” said Gatlin, now 42, who estimated that gold medal earned him multiple millions of dollars more than had he finished second. “As you train and prepare and strategize, you have to make sure you are realizing that these hundredths of a second, something that’s quicker than a snap of a finger, can really change the trajectory of your career and your legacy, as well.”
More than a decade later, in 2015, Gatlin was closer to the end of his career and Bolt was a six-time Olympic gold medalist when they met at world championships in a race that would dictate the conversation leading into the next year’s Olympics.
Gatlin had strung together a series of sub-9.8 100s heading into the championships at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing. Bolt had been ailing with injuries. Gatlin, maybe for the first time since Bolt burst onto the scene, felt like he was a favorite.
Gatlin led halfway through that race. (That wasn’t so unusual against Bolt, who was a slow starter.) But with the finish line about 20 meters away, the American’s strides became uneven. He started leaning forward, and by the time he reached the finish line, he was off-balance, his arms were flailing, while Bolt was still in perfect form, bursting across the finish line. The result: Bolt 9.79 seconds, Gatlin 9.80.
Most pundits viewed it as a brilliant race by Bolt. Gatlin cried in the car all the way back to his hotel, certain he gave it away.
The difference in that race, he said: “It was the fact that I didn’t focus on my race, I focused on racing him.”
Lessons learned
Conley never wore those baggy shorts again. Before one of his critical jumps at the Barcelona Games in 1992, he stood near the start of the runway with tears streaming down his face.
It was the culmination of eight years of disappointment and the chance he had to rectify all of it.
“I cried and I said to myself, ‘I’m about to win the Olympic Games,’” Conley said. “I was picked to win a gold in ’84, I was picked to win it in ’88 and now we’re onto ’92,” he said. “I trained every day, 365 days a year for this one moment, and I had to do it for eight years to get there. There was a lot of buildup to that.”
Gatlin also closed out his career on a high note. Two years after that heartbreaking loss to Bolt at world championships, which led to a .08-second loss at the Rio Olympics, Gatlin pulled an upset in what turned out to be Bolt’s final 100-meter race — at worlds in London.
Bolt finished third that night and Gatlin beat his American teammate, Christian Coleman, by .02 seconds.
In all, Gatlin finished first or second in seven 100-meter races at worlds and Olympics between 2004 and 2019. The cumulative margin between first and second in all those races: .1 seconds — one-tenth of one second.
He, as well as anyone, knows exactly how those tiny fractions separating first and second in Paris can impact so many Olympians’ lives.
“People will congratulate you for getting silver,” Gatlin said, “but they love the people who win.”
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