Was she really that naive? If that's true, it's amazing.
I'm supposed to believe that a Harvard sprinter who competed in the Olympic Trials in 2016, who broke the NCAA indoor 200 record and won NCAAs in 2018 and who was so good she competed in Diamond League meets in Lausanne, Rabat, London, Birmingham and Brussels in 2018 before promptly turning pro that October, didn't know that there was something called a World Champs?
I'll try to reach out someone at Harvard or to Futterman to see if that was a mistake that slipped in as that's wild to me.
PS. I texted the author Matthew Futterman and he confirmed that is what she told him.
I saw this too Rojo! Interesting statement that also dovetails with what you posted.
She has an undergraduate degree in neurobiology from Harvard, where she also studied global health and policy, plus a master’s degree in public health and epidemiology from the University of Texas. The running stuff was supposed to be long over by now. Halfway through college, she didn’t even know professional running was a thing. She thought her heroes, women like Allyson Felix and Sanya Richards-Ross, sort of disappeared for three years between Olympic Games.
It’s especially common amongst the Americans. I’ve come across more than a few American athletes who were completely unaware of the European circuit or anything of high level athletics outside of the Olympics until the opportunity for a career in the sport presented itself to them.
(Early in 2019 after turning pro in 2018), she knew she was supposed to race at the national championships that summer, but she had no idea there was something called the world championships that followed if she made the team.
Was she really that naive? If that's true, it's amazing.
I'm supposed to believe that a Harvard sprinter who competed in the Olympic Trials in 2016, who broke the NCAA indoor 200 record and won NCAAs in 2018 and who was so good she competed in Diamond League meets in Lausanne, Rabat, London, Birmingham and Brussels in 2018 before promptly turning pro that October, didn't know that there was something called a World Champs?
I'll try to reach out someone at Harvard or to Futterman to see if that was a mistake that slipped in as that's wild to me.
PS. I texted the author Matthew Futterman and he confirmed that is what she told him.
TBH it's hard to be a fan of athletes when they don't know their own damn sport.
Maybe that's why she didn't know she had to show up for drug tests either?