As a longtime Olympic enthusiast/nerd, I admit I had mixed feelings about the Summer Olympics in Tokyo being postponed to next summer. Postponing is better than canceling, although it is unusual. The Games have not been postponed or canceled since World War II. I also feel for the people of Japan right now in their fight with COVID-19 and the uncertainties around hosting the Olympics.
Postponing the Olympics also meant postponing the Olympic Trials to next June and the Olympic qualification period until December, which directly impacted Madison grad Chari Hawkins. The U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field would have taken place this week if not for COVID. Now she is getting creative about where to train with multiple facilities closed in San Diego and will undergo surgery to reattach the ligaments she tore in October.
She also shared with me something I had been unaware of before. She has struggled with performance anxiety since 2011. She has not only found ways to cope that work for her, but has become more open to talking about it and hopes to help others by sharing her experiences.
Taking a pause: With Olympics postponed, Chari Hawkins turns focus to 2021
mhereford@postregister.com
If 2020 had gone as planned, Chari Hawkins would be competing this week for a spot on the United States Olympic track and field team.
The U.S. Olympic Trials were scheduled to start June 19 at a newly remodeled Hayward Field at the University of Oregon with Hawkins’ event, heptathlon, concluding today.
The arrival of COVID-19 to the U.S. not only postponed the Trials, but the entire timeline for athletes aiming to compete at the Summer Olympics originally scheduled for next month in Tokyo. The status of the Games was settled March 24, when the International Olympic Committee and Tokyo Organizing Committee announced that the Games would be postponed to July 2021. By April 21, USA Track and Field had postponed the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field to June 2021.
Hawkins said the postponement of the Olympics began as a rumor, then became a more realistic possibility once the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments were canceled. She and the other elite athletes who train under two-time U.S. Olympic heptathlete and current San Diego State head cross-country and track and field coach Shelia Burrell continued to follow their training schedules until they received definite word.
Upon learning the IOC’s decision, Hawkins described it as “almost kind of like a sigh of relief” because it ended the uncertainty. A strange short-term future awaits in the meantime with sports in flux, as she and other athletes who train under Burrell’s direction will not compete for the remainder of 2020. Hawkins said she began 2020 with a lengthy list of goals she wanted to accomplish, and now she is choosing to look at this additional year as an opportunity to get better.
“I think in hindsight, we’re all gonna understand that everything happens for a reason,” said Hawkins, a 2010 Madison graduate and a pro heptathlete since 2015. “At the end of the day no matter what, we can choose two things. We can choose to let everything happen to us or we can choose to proactively do something about it. It does take a lot of discipline to do what we do as athletes. To hold onto that discipline for a full extra year is quite a challenge, but you can take it as maybe you have the opportunity to grow in ways you never thought you could grow.”
‘We are in a good place right now’
Hawkins entered 2020 coming off consecutive 6,000-point performances, including a personal best.
Last July in Des Moines, Iowa, she placed third in heptathlon at the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships with a career-best score of 6,230. That score and her world ranking of 17th landed her an invitation from World Athletics to represent Team USA at the world championships in October in Doha, Qatar. Due to the world championships taking place in the fall rather than the summer because of extreme heat in Doha, Hawkins had a small window of time to train before the Olympic Trials originally scheduled for this month. A top priority for 2020 was achieving the Olympic standard heptathlon score of 6,420, but so was getting healthy.
Eight days before competing in Doha and three days before leaving the U.S., Hawkins sprained her ankle and tore multiple ligaments. She re-sprained the ankle in Doha and competed having not walked, jumped or run on that ankle for a week, ultimately placing 12th with 6,023 points.
“When I went to Doha, I gave myself zero excuses,” Hawkins said. “Competing completely stale like that is difficult in itself. I learned a lot about myself. I learned I belonged on a world stage. I never thought it was a true thing before. I always thought I was inadequate and didn’t belong there.”
With the U.S. Olympic Trials originally scheduled for a little more than eight months after Doha, Burrell said 2020 would have had to be a “well thought out,” structured year for Hawkins. Burrell described the Olympic postponement decision as initially frustrating from a coaching perspective as it created questions on how to advise her athletes with no competitions on the horizon.
Three months into the “new normal,” Burrell said the extra time has allowed Hawkins to get her ankle evaluated, go to physical therapy and learn what she can do in practice as she continues recovering.
“We are in a good place right now, I think,” Burrell said. “The focus has been more technical on improving the events we know we need to improve. The advantage of not having to rush is really playing in our favor right now.”
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Marlowe Hereford 