Olympic dreams are gone this summer but not at all forgotten for trio with KC-area ties
For prospective Olympians from the Kansas City area, the 2020 Tokyo Games might’ve represented a chance to finally move past the nerves of previous Olympic or Olympic trials experiences.
A chance to truly show how well they can perform on the greatest stage, or a potential opportunity to stand atop an Olympic medals podium for the first time.
Yes, for a multitude of elite-level athletes worldwide, the Tokyo Olympics represented a shot at success and perhaps redemption. And then they were postponed until 2021 by a pandemic.
The last time former UMKC steeplechaser and Nixa, Mo., native Courtney Frerichs set foot on the Olympic stage in Rio de Janeiro, she had, as she put it, “stars in her eyes.” She remembers standing on the track as it sunk in that she’d become a part of the greatest sports spectacle on the planet.
While she prepared for a preliminary heat, the crowd roared as Jamaican sprint star Usain Bolt blazed past. Frerichs was somewhat overwhelmed by it all, of being in the presence of so many world-class athletes she’d long admired.
After finishing 11th in the 3,000-meter steeplechase that summer four years ago, Frerichs was looking forward to enjoying the Olympics with a far different mindset than she had as a college student.
“It was so much about experience. It was like, ‘This is the start of the next step in my career. so I’m just taking this all in to grow and learn from,’” she recalled this week. “Four years later, going into these next Games, you know, I’ve grown a lot and matured a lot and I just feel so much more confident in my place in the sport.”
As it turned out, the COVID-19 outbreak would alter the major life plans of not just Frerichs but so many other potential or surefire Olympians. Frerichs said that ever since the 2016 Olympics in Rio, getting to Tokyo — getting back to that global stage — has been a singular goal, a four-year mission.
Frerichs, like all of us, saw the pandemic spreading worldwide this year, but she never dreamed it would get so bad that the Olympics might be canceled. So she continued to prepare as usual. But as the summer drew closer, cancellation became reality.
She was overcome with emotion, more so than she’d expected. Like her peers, she had put so much time and energy into being able to represent her country overseas.
“Even in training, I felt deflated a little bit,” Frerichs said. “The thing that kept me moving forward was how lucky I was that I was healthy, and that I was still being supported to continue another year. I don’t know that every athlete can say that.
Like Frerichs, first-time Olympic hopeful Chris Nilsen, a Park Hill High graduate and three-time NCAA champion in the pole vault, is using this year’s unexpected change of plans to train for the 2021 Games.
Four years ago, Nilsen competed at the Olympic track and field trials as a high schooler. Now, after four years of college competition at the University of South Dakota, he reasons that the extra 12 months of training unexpectedly afforded by this summer’s postponement just gives him more time to hone his craft.
“I wasn’t too upset about it because I looked at it as a kind of an advantage,” Nilsen said. “Like, ‘You’re giving me another year to grow in my sport and get better in some way.’”
Nilsen said that if the Olympics would’ve taken place this summer as scheduled, he would’ve gone in spite of the pandemic. Many of his fellow athletes felt the same. He pointed out that the elite series of track and field competitions known as the Diamond League is still hosting events in Europe this summer, including one in Monaco last week that was attended by some 5,000 people.
Nilsen said he’d been staying fit since the cancellation by doing plyometric exercises. But then, around the middle of the summer, a few opportunities to compete came his way. He vaulted at an event in Texas and is now preparing to do the same at Diamond League meets in Switzerland and Belgium.
So, for some, this down time might be a blessing in disguise. And Nilsen isn’t alone there.
Amy Cragg, a two-time Olympic distance runner who attended Leavenworth High as Amy Hastings (before she married husband Alistair), now calls Portland, Oregon, her home. She said an extra year of preparation for Tokyo is beneficial because it has given her time to rest and resume healthy training.
She’d planned to compete for a spot in the 2020 Olympic marathon but succumbed to overtraining syndrome a couple of weeks before the trials. Forced to withdraw from this year’s February qualifier, she didn’t make the U.S. team that would’ve traveled to Japan this summer.
But now she’ll get another shot in 2021.
“Having that extra time has been really nice to kind of like slowly get back into it,” she said. “My body needed a break, and so I was able to actually take one for the first time in a very long time.”
Cragg said she’s preparing for the Olympic trials in the 10,000 meters, an event she ran at her first Olympics in London 2012. Like Frerichs and Nilsen, she’s found a new goal for which to strive.
The best athletes in the world have a way of persevering amid even the most difficult of times.
“Every little kid grows up, you know, if that little kid is playing sports at that time, they’re like, ‘I want to be the best I can possibly be,’” Nilsen said. “ If I were to make it, it would be a dream come true. and I think I would just count it as one of my very many blessings.”
This story was originally published August 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Olympic dreams are gone this summer but not at all forgotten for trio with KC-area ties."