EUGENE, Ore. — Change is a, perhaps the, only constant in the short time we have to draw breath on Planet Earth.
A day like Monday served as a reminder of how each and all of us is living through a powerful current of change, amplified and accelerated by the pandemic. There is no going back to the way things were.
And that’s OK.
Because it’s OK to consider, for instance, a new way, or ways, of things. In particular, ways sport can help us see differently.
Sport is a prism through which we often can see constructive change, engage in productive dialogue about things that might simply prove too fraught otherwise. These possibilities drew Monday into sharp relief, underscored not only by racing at the U.S. track and field Trials here at Hayward Field in Eugene but by events in Washington and across the world.
Nikki Hiltz at the semifinals of the 1500 // Getty Images
To approach these possibilities, however, means broadening your horizons. It means thinking about a Trials not solely as an ecosystem unto itself — the way it almost inevitably is reported — but as part of something else, something bigger.
Of the change that is happening all around us.
On Monday at Hayward, Nikki Hiltz competed in the women’s 1500 finals. Nikki Hiltz identifies as transgender and binary.
Each of us deserves a full measure of dignity. Each and every one of us deserves to be treated with respect.
This is one of the foundational pieces of the Olympics: respect, friendship and excellence.
Hiltz, who uses the pronouns they and them, did not qualify for the U.S. team, finishing last, clearly done in by the 94-degree heat, signaled after the semifinals by this quote: “Yesterday I was fresh and today I was not.”
Nonetheless, there was — simply by competing before an audience on national television — this powerful affirmation, as Hiltz described in an essay posted in April to the NBC Sports website: “I’m not changing who I am, I’m just showing up as myself. This is who I’ve been my entire life.”
Via an Instagram post, meanwhile, Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib, 28, on Monday became the first active NFL player to come out as gay. “I really have the best life. I’ve got the best family, friends and job a guy could ask for,” he said. He also said that he was donating $100,000 to The Trevor Project, which provides LGBTQ+ crisis intervention and suicide prevention services.
The Raiders put out a tweet in response that simply said, “Proud of you, Carl 🖤”
In New Zealand, that nation’s weightlifting federation announced the nomination of Laurel Hubbard to its Tokyo Games team. Laurel Hubbard, 43, is transgender. Olympic historians say no openly transgender athlete has competed at the Games. Hubbard transitioned roughly 10 years ago and has been at the top of the international scene for the past five years.
IOC transgender guidelines, in place since 2015, say that athletes who transition from male to female are eligible for the Games if total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least a year. As well, the athlete must declare — and not change for four years — gender identity as female.
Hubbard was second at the world championships in 2017, sixth in 2019.
The chief executive of the New Zealand Olympic Committee, Kereyn Smith, said in a statement that Hubbard had not only met eligibility criteria but was “among the world’s best for her event,” adding, “We acknowledge that gender identity in sport is a highly sensitive and complex issue requiring a balance between human rights and fairness on the field of play.”
In Washington, in a sharp victory for “student-athletes,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA could no longer ban certain payments and other benefits related to education. The court moreover strongly suggested it is open to a direct challenge to the NCAA’s “amateur” model itself, which brings in billions of dollars to universities but affords athletes no way to themselves profit.
“Nowhere else in America,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, “can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair-market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.”
The NCAA is the direct pipeline for the U.S. Olympic team, particularly in track and swimming. What this verdict might mean — particularly with the LA Games in seven short years, in 2028 — remains highly uncertain.
Back to action at Hayward, because the action Monday — even if perhaps more prosaic than grand Supreme Court cases — nonetheless underscored change in real time.
Since 2005, Jenny Simpson had made the U.S. team for every global championship. In Rio five years ago, her bronze made her the first American woman to win an Olympic medal at 1500 meters.
Now 34, she will not be going to Tokyo.
She finished 10th in the Trials 1500, in 4:07.76.
Elle Purrier St. Pierre, 25, won in 3:58.03. That made for a new Trials record, and a personal best. The old record was set 33 years ago by Mary Slaney, 3:58.92.
“Can we all blame COVID-19 for everything?” Simpson asked afterward. “I was in killer shape in January 2020. But it was just hard to manage. I had an injury over the summer, and then I was pushing too hard, training too hard, just waiting. That’s one reason I really admire the people who made it this far.
Cory McGee finished second, in 4:00.67. Heather MacLean took third, in 4:02.09. Both also ran personal bests.
Donavan Brazier at the finish of the 800 // Getty Images
A few minutes later came the men’s 800. This was a race Donavan Brazier, the 2019 world champion, essentially had dominated for four years. Outside, domestically, save for one did-not-finish in 2020, he had not lost since 2017. Save that one DNF, he had not finished outside the top three of any outdoor 800 since the 2017 world championships in London.
Donavan Brazier will not be going to Tokyo.
USC’s Isaiah Jewett, the NCAA champion, turned to the strategy used by the 800 king, Kenya’s David Rudisha, sprinting to the front and staying there. He ripped through the first 400 in 50.6, then barely — barely — hung on for second, in a personal-best 1:43.85.
Clayton Murphy won, in a world-leading 1:43.17. The 800 bronze medalist in Rio, Murphy ran that first lap Monday in 51.67, then masterfully negative split the second 400 in 51.5. “You can say I executed it to perfection,” he said later.
Bryce Hoppel, fourth at the 2019 worlds, ran 1:44.14 for third, a seasonal-best.
“I can’t take anything away from this experience,” Brazier said afterward. “I ran shitty.”
At least someone has the self-assurance, poise and courage to speak the unvarnished truth. (That’s for sure a change.)
This is the truth, too:
This will be a very different track and field team than in Rio five years ago.
Just like the U.S. swim team — 11 teens are on the swim team — the roster of the track team, with the Trials now half over, is undergoing a wholesale makeover.
Through nine track races at these Trials, only three — three — of the 26 individual Tokyo qualifiers are returning Olympians: Clayton Murphy, Allyson Felix and Trayvon Bromell. (A fourth would be the hurdler Brianna McNeal, pending the appeal of her doping-related ban.)
In the same nine races after the 2016 Trials, 10 of the 27 qualifiers were returning Olympians.
Change is a, maybe the only, constant.
“I think what will be shocking,” Jenny Simpson said, “will be watching the Olympics on TV. I haven’t seen an Olympic Games on TV since 2004.
“… Maybe it’s hard for some athletes to admit but the sport goes on without you. If you don’t make the Games, then the Games go on.”