Written by Paul Myersberg at USAToday.com
Needing every tool at her disposal to sneak past Allyson Felix and into gold, the Bahamas’ Shaunae Miller pulled out her final trick.
She had already sprinted, churning her way through the home stretch to beat Felix, the now seven-timeOlympic medalist. As runners, they were an even match; something had to give.
“I just tried to give all I had,” Felix said. “I didn’t have more to give.”
So Miller dove.
With the finish line of the women’s 400 meters within a single stride, Miller decided to slide through the stripe while Felix remained upright, giving her the seven-hundredths of a second needed to earn her first Olympic medal.
“The only thing going through my mind was I have to get the gold medal,” Miller said. “When I was on the ground I didn’t know if I had won it yet until I heard my mom screaming. And when I heard her screaming, I had to have won the race.”
It was a painting of unorthodox against tradition: Felix on two feet and Miller falling to her stomach, using any asset in her corner to eke out a gold at the expense of the most decorated female track athlete in the USA’s history — now with one more medal than the great Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
“It works. I mean, look, she won,” said the USA’s Phyllis Francis, who finished fifth. “It’s amazing.”
Whether it was needed in the first place is up for debate. What is unquestioned, however, is that Miller’s dive provides one of the memorable moments at the track during these Rio Games, while also bringing to the forefront a finishing move all sprinters know but few use.
Francis has never dove through the stripe. “I’ll take a look into that, though,” she said. Nor has Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson, who claimed bronze.
And it’s not taught by track coaches — but nor do the same coaches prohibit the move, in the manner of baseball coaches who bemoan the headfirst slide into bases as too slow, not to mention hazardous.
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