AFTER A CRUEL SETBACK, JONES RALLIED FOR A MEMORABLE REVENGE TOUR
By Rich Sands, @sands
(c) 2023 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission.
HONOLULU (08-Dec) — In the most important race of the year, an unexpected snafu forced Dani Jones to re-calibrate her entire season. But that crushing setback ended up fueling an inspired –and inspiring– summer of racing, including a long-overdue personal best in her signature event.
Less than 200 meters into the final of the 1500 meters at July’s USATF Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, a competitor stepped on her New Balance racing shoe, forcing it off her heel. Seconds later, she kicked the shoe off completely, sending it flying to the infield. In an instant, Jones, an NCAA champion in cross country and indoor and outdoor track while at the University of Colorado, found herself up against impossible odds in her bid for a spot on Team USATF at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
“I couldn’t believe the U.S. final was the first time this had ever happened to me,” she told Race Results Weekly in an interview here where she will be racing the seventh annual Kalakaua Merrie Mile on Saturday. “I said to myself, I don’t think I’m going to make this team without a shoe. This field is too good, and there is more to a season than making a team.” She made the heartbreaking decision to step off the track shortly after the 600-meter mark, calling it the “worst feeling ever” in an Instagram post the next day.
With her primary objective for 2023 now off the table, she quickly had to adjust her goals. “I think I spent a week being a little down,” says the 27-year-old Jones, who trains in Boulder, Colorado, as part of Joe Bosshard and Emma Coburn’s Team Boss group. “But I knew after I was over it, I was going to want to get going again. We knew I just needed races to get to where I wanted to be. I had spent the earlier part of the year in sit-and-kick races, and now I wanted to get in some faster races.”
Quickly she put together her own personal “revenge tour” — a playful concept popularized in 2021 by her training partner Kate Grace after disappointment at the Olympic Trials led to a breakthrough summer of astonishing results. “It was definitely in the back of my mind,” she says of Grace’s rebound campaign. “My teammate has done this…
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