College comeback leads to Olympic dreams for 400-meter relay standout Kendall Ellis
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Type some combination of the words “greatest” “track” and “comebacks” into the browser and, even to this day, a video from the 2018 NCAA championships will come up somewhere high on the first screen.
That video starts with Kendall Ellis of Southern California bobbling the baton at the start of the anchor lap of the women’s 4×400. It ends, 50 seconds and change later, with Ellis making up 30 meters over the homestretch to somehow reel in the two runners in front of her and cross the line first.
“I’m always going to have a little piece of history in track and field,” Ellis said this week at the U.S. track trials.
Ellis is 28 now, a professional, the owner of Olympic gold and bronze relay medals and a few more from world championships. She set a personal best, 49.81 seconds, in the semifinals of the 400 meters Saturday and was set to line up in Sunday’s final. Whether she finishes in the top three or not, it wouldn’t be a shock to see her as part of the U.S. relay team when it heads to Paris next month.
“I think it definitely helps when it comes to relays, because it shows I’m trustworthy,” Ellis said. “I guess I’m a vet in the game at this point. It shows I have the maturity to run smart, and I think that’s equally important to having the speed. Certain things you just can’t coach.”
Ellis said that comeback had roots from the year before when she ran an even faster split than she did on the rain-slickened track at Hayward Field in 2018 and got chased down at the end.
“A learning lesson,” she called it.
Her sweetest victory? Not that one. It was her 2018 indoor 400 title.
“It was the American record and the collegiate record,” she said. “I was not expected to win. The announcers never spoke about me, never mentioned my name. Even when I did win, the headline was not about me, it was about someone else. It meant a lot to me. It was the beginning of ‘She can do this.’ And me believing I could have my name etched in history.”
It is, regardless of what happens this week or over the rest of the summer.
She has a gold medal from the Tokyo Games as part of the 4×400 women’s relay team, where she ran in the preliminary round. She also won bronze on the 4×400 mixed relay. Before that, she won a pair of gold medals from world championship relay teams.
She was part of a gold-medal mixed relay team at this year’s World Athletics Relays — a sign that she would, indeed, be in the mix when coaches look at sprinters to fill out relay pools for Paris.
In doing the research, it won’t be difficult to find Ellis’ most famous race.
Halfway through the last lap of that 2018 relay, she is in third place, 30 meters back, barely in the screen. One of the announcers is talking about the runner behind her, from Kentucky, who has unusual closing speed.
A few seconds later, the other announcer hands the race to Purdue. “There’s no way, unless they drop the baton, Purdue’s going to win this, which we certainly didn’t see.”
Ellis had a couple of things going for her. She knew the Purdue runner was a middle-distance specialist without the same closing kick as she has.
“And I wasn’t listening to the announcer or anyone else,” she said. “I’m always going to be optimistic about my chances. I mean, if I don’t believe in me, then who else will?”
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