Elite Athletes Deal With Delay Of Olympics, Look Toward 2021
WHYY: This runner was a favorite for the U.S. Olympic team. Then came the coronavirus pandemic.
For a while after her run, Nia Akins could do nothing but stare at the numbers, big and bright on a digital display board: 2.00.71.
"I think I just kind of sat there in disbelief after running for maybe a solid couple minutes, just kind of like looking at the time and not thinking that I’d run that," she said.
This was back in February, at a collegiate track meet in Boston. Akins had just run 800 meters, about half a mile, in 2 minutes and 0.71 seconds.
"When I thought about the Olympics before that day, I think I thought, you know, it was more of a pipe dream," she said.
Akins is a middle-distance runner at the University of Pennsylvania. She said it's a bit mind-bending to imagine you could be better at something than anyone else in the world. But that time on the board, it was hers, and it was the second fastest in NCAA history.
"After that, I kind of thought, like, why not
