Shae Anderson moves to the next round with a 51.32. Well done!
Another qualifier in the women's 400m is Brittany Aveni of Duke.
She made the finals of the NCAA 400m championships, and now she has moved on to the semi-finals of the Olympic Trials.
What's also interesting about her, is that she was basically an 800m and cross-country runner her first 2 years in college.
Then her junior year, she started running some 400m races, and then this senior season, started running the shorter sprints.
Basically, she was 'type caste' as a middle distance runner, but it turns out she should have been a sprinter all along.
Her best times are 11.35 (100m), 22.96 (200m), and 51.60 (400m).
She only ran the 100m and 200m this season. Who knows how much faster she might have run, if she had focused on these events sooner.
Meanwhile, her best 800m time, which she ran throughout her college career, was only 2:06.49!
This my friends is the caste system at work.
Her sprinting talents were unused and wasted (not just for herself, but the school, because there are more points to be scored with a sprinter than a middle distance runner) because of racial profiling.
This scenario reminds me a little of Laura Roesler, who was a very talented HS sprinter and middle distance runner, but was pushed into the middle distances at college.
And remember, Matthew Boling only started running the 100m and 200m his senior year at high school.
This 'type casting' goes on all the time.
https://cvm.ncsu.edu/budding-olympian-brittany-aveni-gives-new-meaning-to-hurry-up-and-wait/