Athlete dives across finish line to win Olympic gold

Bahamas’ Shaunae Miller took a dive across a finish line to win an Olympic gold medal in Rio.

The 22 years old, 6-foot-1 Bahamian machine won the 400 gold at the expense of U.S.’s Allyson Felix.

The act is defined in the rulebook as “distinguished from the head, neck, arms, legs, hands or feet” hence legal.

Almost 20 minutes after she dove across a finish line to win an Olympic gold medal, Shaunae Miller barely had moved from the spot on the track where she splayed her weary body. 

Her hip sported an oval-shaped strawberry, her arm a cut, her leg a scratch. She was still out of breath. 

Her wheezes alternated between desperation for oxygen and joy. 

She was the Rio Games’ 400-meter champion, and she didn’t care how she won it.

“The only thing I was thinking,” Miller said, “is go for the gold.”

They give away Olympic gold medals every four years, and it takes everything conspiring perfectly – age, fitness, competition – to get one. 

And so she did something desperate and frowned upon and nonetheless perfectly legal under the governing rules of track: 

Mere feet from the end of the race, Shaunae Miller launched herself and hoped her torso passed over the finish line before Allyson Felix’s.

That was the crushing part of this, of course. 

Allyson Felix, in her fourth Olympics for the United States, is, as her teammate Ronnie Ash said, “the queen of the track.” 

Her roommate here, Dalilah Muhammad, said: 

“Nobody dislikes Allyson Felix. And that’s saying a lot from outside and inside of the sport.” 

Felix is beloved, and not only was the 400 her opportunity at redemption, another Olympic gold would have given her five to go along with a pair of silvers. 

No American woman ever – not Jackie Joyner-Kersee, not Florence Griffith Joyner, not Sanya Richards-Ross, not Evelyn Ashford – had won five golds or seven medals on the track. 

Felix was going to become the most decorated female in U.S. track history. She just didn’t know what color the medal would be.

Miller, of the Bahamas, knew when she heard the scream. 

Her mother, Maybelene, yelled in a familiar voice – “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” – and Miller didn’t even need to look up. 

The dive worked. 

Less than one-tenth of a second after her neck breached the finish line and her torso was officially on it – it was .07 seconds, to be exact – Felix’s entire body thrust past it. 

Everything happened so fast the human eye couldn’t register it. 

Only a top-down camera that captured Miller’s hair flapping wildly and the very top of her chest, Superman’d out, beating Felix’s upright stride.

This is a terrible rule, of course. 

Most runners think it’s a terrible rule, and most people watching think it’s a terrible rule, and they’re right, because essentially it says a foot race can be won off your feet. 

And yet there it is, on Page 170 of the IAAF Competition Rules, No. 164: THE FINISH. It doesn’t just permit diving. It practically encourages it.

Shaunae Miller called it instinct. “It was just a reaction,” she said. “My mind just went blank.”

Allyson Felix called it devastating. “In the moment,” Felix said, “it’s just – it’s painful.”

She wasn’t far from Miller on the track, on her back just the same, winded and worn down and wondering what happened to her 2016. 

This is probably Felix’s last Olympics, and even though she turned 30 this year, she believed it could be every bit as memorable and successful as her previous three. 

Then she suffered an ankle injury that lingered and didn’t even qualify for the U.S. team in her signature event, the 200-meter dash. 

Gone was her dream of a 200/400 double gold medal. She would have to settle for just one.

Miller made certain it wouldn’t come easy. She drew an outside line with an advanced stagger, perfect for her style of running. 

“They’re just gonna have to come and catch me,” she said. Before the race, she told her coach: “We’ve got this.” 

Even if Felix was the top qualifier, Miller wasn’t scared, and the first 250 meters of the race proved her right.

The article “Shaunae Miller’s controversial dive for gold ruins Allyson Felix’s Olympic moment” first appeared in Yahoo sports.

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