In Her Olympic Debut, Masai Russell Makes Her Gold Medal Dreams Come True

In only her second professional season, the 24-year-old won the title in the 110-meter hurdles in a dramatic photo finish.

Russell won gold in her Olympic debut, capturing the 100-meter hurdles in a photo finish. / Sam Barnes/Sportsfile via Getty Images

SAINT-DENIS, France — At the beginning of the year, as she always does, Masai Russell wrote herself a list of goals. 

• Win USA Indoor Championships in the 60-meter hurdles
• Become indoor world champion in the 60-meter hurdles
• Break the 60-meter hurdles world record of 7.65 seconds
• Win Olympic Trials in the 100-meter hurdles
• Win Olympic gold in the 100-meter hurdles
• Break the 100-meter hurdles world record of 12.12 seconds

She finished third at the USA indoor championships and fourth in the indoor world championships, and her best 60-meter time was 7.79. She has not yet broken 12.25 in the 100-meter hurdles, but in July, she won Olympic Trials, and on Saturday, by the slimmest of margins, she achieved the goal she wanted most of all. 

Tokyo gold medalist Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, of Puerto Rico, led as late as the eighth hurdle, and France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela appeared to have a couple inches on Russell as they cleared the last hurdle, but Russell’s strength has always been her finishing kick. She has trained those last 10 meters, after the 10th hurdle, what feels like thousands of times. And she knew that this field is so deep that success would come down to a lean. So she leaned as hard as she could. 

“The fact that I was that close between a gold and a silver—I’m glad I did,” she said with a laugh.

After it was over, as she stared at the jumbotron waiting to see which color her medal would be, she thought, Come on, come on, come on. Then her name appeared first, in 12.33, one hundredth of a second ahead of Samba-Mayela and three hundredths ahead of Camacho-Quinn. 

Russell wandered around in disbelief for a while, but by the time the United States anthem played, she was weeping. 

“It always seems like it’s not possible,” she said, “Until it is.”

Russell (right) narrowly beat out the defending Olympic champion Camacho-Quinn (left) to take gold. / Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

Defending Olympic champion Camacho-Quinn was disappointed in her own performance, although she acknowledged some pride in capturing her second of Puerto Rico’s 11 ever medals. But Samba-Mayela sobbed too, sprawled across the track immediately after she learned she’d won silver. “I thought [the Olympics in France] would be some of the most stressful days of my life, but actually it has been a lot of pleasure, because of all this crowd,” she said. “They are lovers of sport, and they shared that pleasure with me. All that joy, it lifted me, and when I could hear them all screaming my name and ‘Allez les bleus,’ it was just amazing. It was really lifting me.”

But on this day, no one could top Russell. In some ways, this moment felt like it took forever to arrive. “Honestly, seeing everyone else from Team USA do their thing, I was like, ‘Yeah, I need to get a taste of that,’” she said. “Because I've been here for a long time. It’s going on the end of two and a half weeks! So I just wanted to make it a good one. I wanted to come out here and put my name in history.” 

But in reality, Russell is 24. She graduated from the University of Kentucky—“Hurdle U,” said Camacho-Quinn, who along with two-time 400-meter hurdle Olympic gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and men’s 110-meter silver medalist Daniel Roberts is a Wildcat—just over a year ago. This is only Russell’s second professional season. She fell during her semifinal at last year’s world championships and did not advance to the final. She finished second, to Camacho-Quinn, in Friday’s semifinal. 

“To come out here and this be my first Games and become an Olympic gold medalist, I knew I was capable of it,” she said. “I wrote it down. “I’ve fallen so short so many times this year. But, I mean, none of those races matter now.”

She spent much of Friday night awake, imagining herself atop the podium. “I knew this moment was meant for me,” she said.

But even as she was digesting it, she was thinking ahead. She bought herself a black Mercedes to celebrate her Olympic Trials win. After this, she said, “Probably a house.” And she wasn’t done crossing off goals. She still has that world record to break. She grinned and said, “The season’s not over yet.”