OT Women’s Steeple: Val Constien Wins Instant Classic as Marisa Howard Stunningly Makes the Team

Constien ran an 11-second pb and Howard ran a 15-second pb in the deepest women's steeple ever at a USAs

By Jonathan Gault

June 28, 2024

2024 US Olympic Trials -- Track & Field

EUGENE, Ore. — On paper, Thursday night’s women’s steeplechase final at the 2024 US Olympic Trials did not have the makings of a classic. The event had lost some luster when Emma Coburn and Courtney Frerichs, the two greatest steeplers in US history and the only American women ever to medal in this event at the Olympics, withdrew weeks earlier due to injury. One of the two had been on nine of the last 10 US World Championship or Olympic teams; outside of Coburn and Frerichs, no other American steepler had ever run faster than 9:09. Yet by the time Thursday’s logic-defying final was over, it would take 9:07 just to make the 2024 Olympic team in the fastest US steeple final ever run, a race packed with individual brilliance, incredible breakthroughs, last-lap drama, and a late fall.

Let’s try to unpack the madness. Val Constien, a 2021 Olympian who seven weeks ago was simply happy to have qualified for the 2024 Trials following a torn ACL in 2023, was your champion in convincing fashion, running an 11-second personal best of 9:03.22 to smash Coburn’s US championship record of 9:09.41 from 2021. The reliable Courtney Wayment, the fourth-placer at the last Trials, led the middle laps of the race and finished 2nd in 9:06.50 to make her first Olympic team after making Worlds teams in 2022 and 2023.

Embed from Getty Images

Most stunning of all was third-placer Marisa Howard, who failed to break 9:30 in either of her races this year before the Trials and has run without a traditional sponsor since 2017, making her first US team by running a 15-second personal best of 9:07.14 at the age of 31. Good luck making sense of that one.

In all, the top nine finishers all ran personal bests, completely rewriting the US all-time list in the process — of the 10 fastest American steeplers in history, half of them ran their pbs in this race. Previously, every woman who had run 9:14 or faster in a US final had made the team; tonight, Olivia Markezich ran 9:14.87 — despite a fall — and only finished 6th. It was a race of unprecedented depth in a US championship, and it came without Coburn and Frerichs and with reigning US champion Krissy Gear dropping out midway through with a hamstring injury.

Results

Place	Athlete	Sponsor	Time	PB/SB
1	Valerie Constien	NIKE	9:03.22	PB
2	Courtney Wayment	On	9:06.50	PB
3	Marisa Howard	Tracksmith/Idaho Afoot	9:07.14	PB
4	Gabbi Jennings	adidas	9:12.08	PB
5	Kaylee Mitchell	NIKE	9:14.05	PB
6	Olivia Markezich	OAC	9:14.87	PB
7	Allie Ostrander	Unattached	9:21.82	PB
8	Annie Rodenfels	Boston Athletic Association	9:22.66	PB
9	Lexy Halladay	Brigham Young	9:22.77	PB
10	Logan Jolly	ASICS	9:26.32
11	Angelina Ellis	Under Armour/Dark Sky Distance	9:28.19
12	Kayley DeLay	Brooks/BROOKS Beasts TC	9:29.07	SB
13	Madie Boreman	Oiselle	9:31.41
DNF	Krissy Gear	HOKA NAZ Elite	DNF

Rodenfels & Wayment push the pace

The race began quickly for an unusual reason: Annie Rodenfels is not a good hurdler. Rodenfels, who runs for the B.A.A. High Performance Team and was 6th in the US steeple final in 2022, is battling a major case of the yips when it comes to clearing barriers. Rodenfels takes several stutter steps when she approaches a barrier, including an exaggerated step to her left akin to a point guard trying to fake out an opponent. Rodenfels knows that such a routine complicates things for everyone else and also knew it was the Olympic Trials final and she did not have the Olympic standard. So she took a big swing and took the race out in 3:00.53 for the first kilometer.

“I don’t want to impede everyone else,” Rodenfels said. “I know that it’s not great form…I’m not trying to ruin other people’s races.”

Article continues below player.

Kevin Morris photo

No one directly followed Rodenfels, but Wayment led the chase pack through a still-quick 3:04.85, then kept grinding after passing Rodenfels with three laps to go, with Wayment running a 3:03.39 second kilometer. Wayment finally surrendered the lead on the home straight of the penultimate lap, by which time she had whittled the field down significantly. At the bell, it was classic Olympic Trials scenario: four athletes left in the lead pack (Wayment, Howard, Constien, and Markezich) but only three tickets to Paris.

Howard led early in the final lap but Constien, with her powerful forward lean, blew by with 300m to go and would open a gap that would never close. She won going away thanks to a sensational 2:54.70 final kilometer, world record pace. The true drama lay behind her. Markezich, Howard, and Wayment hit the water jump in that order, but Markezich, the 2023 NCAA champ for Notre Dame who recently signed for the On Athletics Club, stumbled coming out of the pit, with Howard moving past her into second. Wayment also moved up, relegating Markezich to fourth entering the final 100, but despite mounting fatigue, Markezich still held out hope.

“In the last 200 of a steeple, I always tell myself if I’m not where I want to be place-wise, I’m always [thinking] it’s not over,” Markezich said. “You never know what can happen in the last 200 of a steeple — someone could fall. I never thought I would fall.”

The fundamental challenge of the steeplechase is to budget enough energy to clear 28 barriers and seven water jumps while running as fast as possible. Before tonight, Markezich had always gotten it right. In seven years of steepling, she had never once fallen — not in practice, not in a race. But sometimes making an Olympic team requires taking a risk, like trying to run 10 seconds under your personal best. Markezich’s legs cleared the final barrier, but her body hit its limit as she tried to land and she crashed to the Hayward Field track. As Wayment and Howard made the team, Markezich picked herself up and crossed the finish line in lane 3 (despite the time lost, her 9:14.87 was still a two-second pb) before crumpling to the track again, covering her face as she came to grips with just how close she had been to making the team.

A rebuilt Olympian and a total stunner

Embed from Getty Images

When Constien made her first Olympic team three years ago, she was the consummate underdog, working a full-time job for Stryd, a running tech company, and paying her own way to the Trials. Constien still works for the company full-time, taking paid time off to run the 2024 Trials, but her 9:14.29 from last month’s Pre Classic (#1 on the US list and #5 on the world list for 2024) ranked her among the favorites in tonight’s race. It took a while for Constien to view herself that way, however.

In May 2023, running her first race after signing a shoe deal with Nike last spring, Constien tore her right ACL while landing in the water pit in the Doha Diamond League. Constien knew something was wrong and once an MRI revealed the extent of the damage, she wrote off not only 2023, but 2024 as well. She missed four months of running and when she returned, she had mentally accepted that she probably was not going to the Olympics.

“Taking that pressure off and just really focusing on trying to be healthy and do everything right was how I got to this point,” Constien said.

When Constien returned to the steeple by running 9:27 at Track Fest on May 11, she was happy just to have earned the right to participate in the Olympic Trials. Then she ran 9:14 at Pre.

“After Pre, I was like, okay, I’m going to probably do more than participate,” Constien said.

Constien was right. She will head to Paris as the US champion and, as things stand, the third-fastest woman in the world in 2024. A medal is not out of the question — nor is it for Wayment, now #5 in the world in 2024.

Howard is up to #7, and it is not a stretch to say her result tonight was one of the unlikeliest results in Olympic Trials history. Not so much the place — Howard had finished 5th or 6th four times at USAs in the past — but the time. Howard, whose pb entering tonight was 9:22, ran 9:31 in her first steeple of the year at Stanford on April 26 and 9:34 in her second at the Portland Track Festival on June 9. In between, she ran 4:16 for 1500, eight seconds off her pb. None of her results indicated something special was brewing, but Howard said her workouts had gone well and she felt mentally stronger heading into the Trials after staying off of social media and avoiding comparing herself to her rivals. Still, she was in a state of shock upon crossing the finish line.

“Just complete disbelief,” Howard said.

Embed from Getty Images

Many women in Howard’s position would not have stayed in the sport this long. Howard was sponsored by apparel company Oiselle until 2017 but since then has lacked a traditional sponsor while living in Boise, where she is coached by Boise State coach Pat McCurry. Her husband, Jeff, is a teacher, and he has supported the family financially since Marisa gave up her job as a school nurse in 2020. In May 2022, Marisa gave birth to a son, Kai, then watched from afar as her training partner, Lizzie Bird of Great Britain, ran 9:07 in the steeple in Monaco. That result inspired Howard.

“I knew I could run with her,” Howard said.

Howard does have a small deal with Tracksmith that provides her with gear and some financial support, but it is not enough to make running a full-time gig. And while Howard said she might have had better luck finding a sponsor had she been willing to move from Boise, she did not let her status affect how she viewed herself in this race, where 11 of the other 14 runners had a shoe deal.

“A sponsor doesn’t make Olympic teams,” Howard said.

The deepest US steeple final ever

Emma Coburn and Courtney Frerichs changed the game in the women’s steeplechase, showing that Americans could compete with — and beat — the very best the world had to offer. They combined to win five global medals from 2016-21. But both women have battled injuries in recent years and neither was at the Trials this year. Would anyone step up in their place?

The answer was yes. A generation of athletes that grew up watching Coburn and Frerichs win medals is starting to come of age and are ready to follow in their footsteps and take on the rest of the world.

“Emma and Courtney Frerichs paved the way,” said Constien. “Without them, we wouldn’t have such a high bar. Everyone’s aspiring, everyone’s inspired by them. Without them, there’s no way that we could have done what we did here today.”

Constien has almost cleared one of those bars, at least when it comes to times. It is hard to believe, but Constien’s 9:03.22 tonight is less than a second slower than Coburn’s 9:02.35 pb.

“When one star falls, another rises,” Wayment said, after also paying tribute to Coburn and Frerichs. “…It’s exciting for the future of this sport, and we’re starting to see a new wave of American women’s steepling. And I’m excited to be a part of it.”

All-time US women’s steeple list before and after the 2024 US Olympic Trials final

Place	Before tonight	After tonight
1st	Courtney Frerichs 8:57.77	Courtney Frerichs 8:57.77
2nd	Emma Coburn 9:02.35	Emma Coburn 9:02.35
3rd	Courtney Wayment 9:09.91	Val Constien 9:03.22
4th	Colleen Quigley 9:10.27	Courtney Wayment 9:06.50
5th	Jenny Simpson 9:12.50	Marisa Howard 9:07.14
6th	Krissy Gear 9:12.81	Colleen Quigley 9:10.27
7th	Val Constien 9:14.29	Gabbi Jennings 9:12.08
8th	Leah Falland 9:16.96	Jenny Simpson 9:12.50
9th	Olivia Markezich 9:17.36	Krissy Gear 9:12.81
10th	Gabbi Jennings 9:18.03	Kaylee Mitchell 9:14.05

Post-race interviews

Val Constien, 1st

Constien, who is coached by Mark Wetmore and Heather Burroughs, said it was “a shame” that they will not have their contracts renewed by the University of Colorado.