Athing Mu moving to Los Angeles to be coached by Bobby Kersee makes all the sense in the world. She has already delivered on her potential as the most exciting 800m runner maybe ever by winning both Olympic and World Championship gold in 2021 and 2022.
So what does one of the world's greatest athletes do when they aren't being challenged anymore? Thankfully, Mu is just stepping down to the 400m, unlike Usain Bolt who respectably but unremarkably gave soccer a go. Despite having never raced a 400m at a major professional meet, she did win the NCAA championship in the 400m in 49.57, setting the collegiate record at the same time, and has run on 4x400m teams that have won the NCAA championships in 2021, the Olympics in 2021, and the World Championships in 2022. So she can certainly be competitive in the 400m on the international stage, but winning the 400m and the 800m at a global championship is going to be difficult even for an athlete as accomplished as Mu.
For context, Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas won gold in the Tokyo Olympics running 48.36, while Allyson Felix won bronze in 49.46. Even without assuming that Mu has gotten faster simply with age and the benefit of two years of professional training by the time the next World Championships roll around in 2023, Mu's collegiate time of 49.57 suggests she should already be in the medal conversation. More importantly, Miller-Uibo has already said she does not plan to run the 400m at the 2024 Olympics, opting to run the 200m instead, and Allyson Felix has since retired. At the Paris Olympics in 2024, it's very likely that she will be one of the favorites to win gold in the 400m.
And if Mu wants to win the 400m, there is no better coach to get her there than Bobby Kersee. Kersee has coached women to gold medals in the 100m, 100m hurdles, 200m, 400m, and 400m hurdles. The most recent athlete to switch coaches to work with Kersee, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, went from a close yet decisive defeat in Doha to obliterating her own world record in the 400m hurdles in the most impressive race I've ever seen. If anyone can get Mu a 400m gold, it's Bobby Kersee.
Ironically though, Kersee might be Mu's biggest obstacle to 400m gold. Him and McLaughlin-Levrone anyway. The only woman in track and field who has been more exciting than Mu is McLaughlin-Levrone. Her victory over Dalilah Muhammad in the Tokyo Olympics was in my opinion the best race of the games, and she has been taking down world records in a way we haven't seen since Usain Bolt. She's looking for a new challenge too, and will be stepping into the open 400m with Athing Mu. The best 400m times are about 3-4 seconds faster than the best 400m hurdles times, and considering McLaughlin-Levrone has run 50.68 with hurdles, she's my Olympic favorite right now.
Even if Mu can beat McLaughlin-Levrone, which I think is possible if unlikely, the Olympic schedule is going to be very difficult for her to navigate. Currently, if Mu runs the 800m and the 400m, she will have to run her first heat of the 400m in the morning and then the 800m final in the afternoon. She's fast enough that she should be able to take the last 200m fairly easy, but she'll have to run her first 200m pretty hard to make sure she gets to the next round. With only a few hours of rest, that may be enough to give the rest of the 800m field the edge they need.
Her biggest threat is Keely Hodgkinson of Great Britain. She was barely behind Mu in both the Olympics and World Championships where Mu won gold, and while neither of those wins were ever in doubt in my mind, watch the final 200m of the World Championships this last year (start at the 4:30 mark). Mu has to push Hodgkinson into the inside rail coming around the turn to make sure she can't surge ahead (the move was totally legal and tactically brilliant) . It looked to me like Hodgkinson had enough left to pass Mu if it weren't for that move breaking her momentum. The 800m is truly a race of inches, and Mu running the 400m in the morning might be enough to give Hodgkinson the gold.
Then she has to consider how well she can run the 400m with three 800m races in her legs. That's a lot of racing seven days, and every athlete running two events in the Olympics struggles to run their best in both events. That's why there are so few successful attempts to win two individual events in the Olympics. Allyson Felix never did it. Veronica Campbell-Brown never did it. Joshua Cheptegai, the Ugandan 5000m/10,000m runner, was about as sure of a lock as there is for those two events in Tokyo and came up short. It's really hard So as talented as Mu is, whether she can really pull off a double is a question that the very greatest athletes have to ask themselves.
What I am most interested to see though is her training. The 800m is such a strange event that athletes rarely attempt a second event, and when they do, it is typically the 1500m. That's because for all the talk about how fast 800m runners have to run now and how the event is turning into a sprint, it is fundamentally a distance event, and it always will be.
Athletes have three energy systems. Two of these systems are anaerobic systems, and create energy without using oxygen. This is great for short bursts of activity because athletes can go (almost) as hard as they want without needing to pump blood to all the muscles where that energy is being created. Problem is, athletes can only use that energy for 60-90 seconds. After that, energy needs to be created aerobically, the third energy system, using oxygen.
Mu's best 800m time is 1:55, meaning she needs to create energy aerobically for thirty seconds to a minute. Without dedicating a significant amount of her training to using her aerobic energy system, she won't be able to run her best at the 800m. But every day spent training aerobically is a day she doesn't train her anaerobic energy system. Every other 400m athlete in the field will focus the vast majority of their training on anaerobic energy, including McLaughlin-Levrone. Is it possible for Mu to get in enough aerobic training to hold of Hodgkinson in the 800m, which the last world championships showed is not a given even when she is focusing on the 800m, while putting in enough anaerobic training to keep up with McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400m? and not get injured while significantly changing the way she trains? It's possible, but figuring out what that training plan looks like is going to be Kersee's biggest challenge yet.
Mu's attempt at 400m/800m gold would be the most ambitious double in my lifetime. There's a chance she tires herself out for the 800m final, and a better chance she can't beat McLaughlin-Levron in the 400m, even at her best. But that's what makes this move so great. Before, the women's 800m wasn't really in question. Now, the Tokyo rematch of Mu and Hodgkinson is going to have much higher stakes. The women's 400m is going to be the most anticipated 400m in recent memory. For the first time in years Mu is going to be in real danger of losing.
Had Mu continued to focus on the 800m, it is very likely she could be the greatest 800m runner of all time. But she knows she has a chance to do something really special, something that maybe only she has a chance to do. Winning the 400m and the 800m, especially in the same Olympics, would make her one of the greatest athletes in just in the history of track and field, but the history of the Olympics. She would be in the same category as Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams. But unfortunately, we don't remember silver medals, even if they inspire us in the moment.
As long as Mu can win the 800m at the Paris Olympics, I don't think losing the 400m will hurt her legacy. We'll still look at her as, probably, the best 800m runner of all time. But if she leaves Paris with no golds, she will have lost a lot of ground in the race for greatest Olympian of all time. I know that's harsh, but when you are being compared to the greatest athletes of all time, the margin for error is incredibly thin. This double is a huge gamble. It might not work, but it's going to be thrilling to watch, and I know I'll be rooting for her.
-By Matt Cowden