During a self-imposed break from the track, the middle-distance runner rediscovered the joy that allowed her to strike gold twice in Tokyo.
Days turned into weeks that stretched for months, and, still, Athing Mu didn’t want to run. She had always wanted to. Run harder, run faster, run past every competitor in sight. Not running equated to not breathing. As she glided around tracks with graceful strides—eyes widened, mouth agape, often smiling while dominating—she presented an ideal, a person born to do exactly what they were doing, better than anyone else in the world.
Arceneaux and Kersee met with Mu immediately. This wasn’t quite an intervention. But it was necessary, serious. They started with the truth. They knew that she was struggling and that something wasn’t right. “Are you O.K.?” they asked, meaning her, the human. She came to understand where that started, with her mindset, the absence of unnecessary internal expectations. In Japan, Mu never considered any race beyond her next one. After qualifying for the final, she told herself,This approach—low expectations yielding staggering dominance—made for an ideal bubble. Mu ran as if immune to pressure, ran because of how it made her feel, giving her purpose and forming her identity. She didn’t start out running for money or fame. She ran to win.
“That was like an All-Star team,” she says. “We’ll never have that again. I mean, we’ll have that again. But it won’t be in the same realm as what it was.” She pauses. “The fact that I anchored was just, like … man, I was running forShe was 19—on top of her sport, on top of the world. But majestic success created new problems she never anticipated.
Two years after the Olympics she let slip in one interview what she had known, inside, ever since those magical Games concluded.She had always embraced the gravity of competition but needed time to adjust to the unfathomable stress often baked into greatness, all the eyeballs and attention, flashing lights and clicking cameras, not to mention the negativity swamps known as social media.
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