Will Athing Mu ever be a factor in the 800m again?

Nope.

She is done.

It was good while it lasted

i'll be shocked if she ever attempts anything more than a half hearted comeback.

Probably not but that is also cool. She had a multi year run from high school to the Olympics where she dominated which is more than most athletes get.

have fun, live life, be happy

WHO????

She has lost interest in being a competitive runner. It is much more likely that she is retired from running than her running 1:54 again.

I feel as though once an athlete sets records, wins gold, and has that undefeatable season you’re only doing it for the love of the game afterwards with nothing less to prove. It sounds like Mu doesn’t have that love of the game anymore.

I would hate to do pro level 800m training every day if I didn’t have a passion for it. That stuff is physically and mentally exhausting, and then you add the intense scrutiny over everything including weight, diet, activity outside of running, etc. constantly having to do press interviews /gear hauls/ gear modeling shoots. That’s a lot if you aren’t passionate about it.

She’s almost certainly done running. She didn’t even release a statement when she left Kersee. JG found out and broke the story when he contacted Kersee just to get an update. All Kersee said was that she and her husband moved back to Texas. We have no idea if she has a current coach, training group, contract, or sponsor. Parker Valby is more transparent about her career than she is. I’m going to guess that it will be until about May and she’ll finally announce her retirement because she at that point will be sick of NBC and the rest of the media asking what her plans are.

Her case is a perplexing one. Has anybody that good ever outright quit so early in their career before? She’s still only 23. It is one of the absurd cases I’ve seen in athletics. She must have really hated the sport to just drop it like that with all the sponsorship money she was making. I’ve never seen anything like it.

That is all certainly true but at the same time that is a lot of future earnings to turn down at 23 years old. She could have easily milked it another ten years and still earned a bare minimum 7 figure annual salary. She would have made that much even during years she is out for injury. Most people don’t like their job. It’s their way of earning money. There’s things to consider when you are reasonably wealthy; your kids’ college, retirement, health care savings, parents’ funeral expenses, charity programs for your community, etc. In a way she is forgoing what could have been extra financial support for her family and community. It’s not like she’s as wealthy as Serena Williams, but every little bit of cash helps in this world. I’m not so sure this was a good decision if running is the one skill she has to earn that much money. Of course it sucks to do a job you hate everybody, but billions of people do it because they have to.

The correct way to ask this question is: Is Athing Mu update?

I don't think it's as simple as saying hey, (almost) everybody needs to earn a living, so why doesn't she at least just stick with track in a half-hearted way and make much more than she would with a regular old job? That strategy would make sense if she was being paid an equivalent amount of money for being an accountant or something like that. But no ordinary accountant feels the weight of huge expectations like an elite athlete does, or have dramatic ups and downs in their career in the same way. You could have a couple of "down years" as an accountant, where you performed 5% worse than your usual standard, and nobody would even notice...and you certainly wouldn't see major press articles speculating about what could possibly be wrong, and should you lobby for a new department manager, and so forth.

The point being, some people love the pressure of elite sports, and trying to prove the haters wrong, and all that kind of stuff, whereas other people might just want a simple life with no drama.

It is important to note that Athing Mu never really trained, At least not in 2021.

She had a full program (almost 40 races) racing from Jan to Aug.

A college fresher to double Olympic gold.

Making a mockery of a professional athletes routine.

No person has since been second in 400M and first in 800M simultaneously.

The previous person to achieve this was Jarmila Kratochvilova over 40 years ago.

Just how she achieved is a black box.

To sustain it, proved impossible and hence the fall of the Athing Mu putative professional career.

I get what you’re saying but being a pro mid-d athlete is an exceptionally hard thing to do if you aren’t in love with the sport. Constant interviews, 2-3 hard workout sessions a day, strict diet, criticism from the masses, constant anxiety of loss of contract over bad races… Us on these forms are all pretty passionate so we don’t quite get it, but most people would choose a desk job (that often pays as much as a pro runner makes) over it any day of the week.

You clearly don't know much about Athing Mu. You just made up that whole post. Athing Mu never had to do "constant interviews." She never did "3 hard workout sessions per day". She didn't have a "strict diet". She was never "anxious" that she would lose her Nike contract because of a bad race. And there are very few desk jobs that pay as well as what Nike was paying Athing Mu. Stop making things up.

If Keely can get injured and come back faster miraculously Athing isn't done

Don’t be sad that it’s over, be happy that it happened.

This post was pretty clearly a generalization of a day in the life of a pro middle distance athlete.

If we want to be Mu specific and how that applies to what I said:

Her physique is produced by a strict diet, her results certainly aren’t produced by 30-45 minutes of jogging around a day, and I sure remember seeing LOTS of press and interviews on Mu. Her recent poor performances have been credited to poor mental health and debilitating anxiety.

Please elaborate on how i’m making this all up?

Bjorn Borg retired at the top of the tennis world, he was 26-27 I think. Burnt out. Made a sort of come back.

lots of NFL guys have left the sport at 23-24.

Heck our top figure skater retired at 16! Is on the comeback now.

Personally, if I knew I had the potential to run the world record in any event, but decided to quit (regardless of if there are mental problems going on), I probably wouldn’t be happy with myself. That would be something that I would live with in the back of my mind my whole life—“what if?”

Again, that’s just me. Most of us are incredibly dedicated to running and competing, and even the possibility of that kind of greatness would be irresistible. Maybe it’s different with someone who basically grew up dominating everyone. Maybe the WR just doesn’t matter to her. But that would be a shame.