the Athing Mu Worlds saga demonstrates something important about track fans...

"Least suspected athlete"? Her coach is Bob Kersee, Flojo's former coach. Outside of Soviet bloc athletes, Flojo was probably the most suspected doper in history.

Extremely selfish. For someone who's gotten a lot from the sport, including probably her modeling career, she's given back very little.

The only thing good that will come from this is more motivation for WA to end the bye for World Champions. The bye already works against the push for more participation by moving to a world ranking qualification system instead of a straight marks qualification. It needs to be eliminated.

Interesting thread. I wonder how much of what the OP is describing relates to the lack of glamor and prestige in running. I've learned to love the process of pushing my own limits and embracing the drudgery inherent to the sport, but I never would've considered running for a second if I had any talent in basketball or soccer for example. When we see someone like Mu who may well be the most gifted athlete in the history of her event still struggling to care, I think it gets to the heart of an insecurity that a lot of us have. We need the top pros to be all-in so that we can justify our own obsession.

The over moderation has gotta stop. If you’re going to delete post yet the responses quoting the deleted and now irrelevant post stay up it just makes things look weird and throws off the discussion.

strawman arguments. Transparency is something that is pretty normal in all professional sports when it comes to the well beings of the athletes.

Good points.

I don't really care about the fan thing, though its confusing to say that your focused on the Olympics so skipping a two-lap race this year and then yammer on and on about silly modeling.

I just worry more about whether she will later regret not racing in her prime. Being successful in modeling is not assured, its a very fickle business. She can do both for awhile. The competitive life of a middle distance runner is usually short. Now she has a coach who has always been weird with master plans and about racing. I think she is getting bad advice. It looks like she's ready for World's so why not run it? Or are they saying that her conditioning isn't there to win it?

The responsibility of a pro athlete is to their pay master.

No race, no pay.

I would argue in almost all sports, esp ball and stick sports, saying someone isnt committed or cares about competition is about the worst thing you can say about them.

Just saying. There was a time had nick symonds won a world title . If he hardly showed up he would have gotten destroyed on here….I’m old enough to remember where we wanted our studs racing. Deep down you know the OP is right..:

I will sure to let her know.

Maybe she’s just not fit enough to beat Keely at worlds and knows it, but doesn’t wanna settle for anything less than gold. As much speculation as there is around her coach, I actually doubt this is about positive test as I feel like he wouldn’t be talking about 2024 so much if it was.

My guess at this point is that she’s nursing an injury - I’m not gonna speak about what her mindset is because none of us know anything (as much as some ppl on here wanna pretend like they have a bunch of major T&F connections when they don’t). We’ll find out this week when the scratches are due!

If that's so wouldn't you expect her to say that - as other athletes do?

Nobody is saying that they should have a say in Athing's priorities. Everyone I see is saying that they are losing interest in her as a fan. Also, how often is Athing interfacing with these crazy passionate fans? She's barely ever at a track meet! She can do whatever she wants but you may notice athletes in major sports tend to thank fans, express gratitude toward fans etc. The fans DO matter. I think the veil of Nike paying her makes it seem like the fans don't need to exist, and they might not need to. Her Instagram page and publicity might matter more to Nike than her racing. That seems to be the case (see Colleen Quigley and many others) but it's awful awful awful for the sport. The highest paid athletes in the sport are influencers while there are truly passionate elites racing dozens of times a year for pennies.

Maybe she just really doesn't enjoy the sport. I got very nervous/anxious before big races to the point where I would dread them weeks in advance, not sleep well the week leading up, etc, and it was eventually what made me hang it up. I obviously wasn't under nearly as much pressure as her.

She's 21 and figuring out who she is. If anything, I think it makes her more interesting.

No I wouldn’t, because other athletes DON’T do that (and she hasn’t either even though this news isn’t very new at this point) 😂 you must be new to this sport. T&F lacks the transparency and communication that other sports have…athletes will disappear for a bit and sometimes we won’t find out why for months - like Houlihan. She tested positive, disappeared for a while, and THEN we found out why later on (not saying this happens with every athlete but it’s pretty common in this sport). Meanwhile, if an NBA or NFL player isn’t playing/is injured/suspended, we’ll find that out very quickly.

I hope she does make some kind of a statement about where she’s at but I doubt we’ll hear anything until the last minute, as she probably wants to be as sure as possible about her decision before she officially makes it.

Athing Mu, as an athlete, is more than one in a million. She's literally one in a billion.

As a model?? Are models that hard to come by? I certainly doubt it. I think any and most interest in Athing Mu as a model is totally due to her gold medal and athletic prowess, not her physical attributes. Once her athletic prestige has withered, she's gone - unless she can sing and dance.

If an Olympic champion is injured and unable to compete at the worlds we would expect to know why. Athletes are often injured. It isn't a big deal unless it's career ending and it certainly isn't a source of shame.

If they have lost confidence mentally or are under some other kind of a cloud then maybe we wouldn't hear from them.

She isn't even 1 in 1 million humans unless being sexist. Funny how sexism comes into play in sports. Mu wouldn't place at some high school state meets.