Maia Ramsden snuck into the women's 1500m semifinals at the Paris Olympics when she finished sixth in her heat.
Ramsden, 22, needed a top-six placing at Stade de France on Tuesday to progress directly into the semifinals and avoid having to go the repechage route.
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She seemed out of the reckoning, having drifted back too far from the leaders, but mounted a furious sprint over the final 60 metres and caught Ireland’s Sarah Healy on the line, out-dipping her to claim the crucial sixth spot.
Ramsden was timed at 4 minutes 02.83 seconds to Healy’s 4:02.91, but this was a race where times were irrelevant and placings were everything.
What did not help was that Ramsden miscounted her place going into the last straight.
“I thought I was already sixth, but I was seventh. I’d been told not to count placings but just to pass as many people as possible, and thank goodness I did because I needed to pass one more to get in the top six.”
Ramsden felt she may need to run a personal-best to advance past the heats, but as it turned out she was about half a second below her PB.
“This was harder. When I ran that time in LA there was a rabbit in the race, we were paced and it was set up. Here there was jostling, and it was quite go-stop-go.”
She felt she was ready to run faster in her next outing.
“I know I have a good kick but I need to put myself in a better position than I did today ... I definitely wanted the day off racing, I wanted to avoid the extra race.”
With the speed she showed at the end of her race today, she has the potential to be a 1500m finalist if she gets her tactics right.
The New Zealander has had an amazing background to get to the Paris Olympics.
Her father, Mark, is a diplomat and because of that Maia has moved about a lot. With her background, she’s relatively unknown to New Zealand track and field followers, though much of her family lives in Wellington.
She was born in New York, and while the family was living in the Solomon Islands she took up the triathlon. Later they moved to Fiji, where she turned more seriously to athletics.
When her father became New Zealand ambassador to Ethiopia and the family lived in Addis Ababa, Maia was absorbed into a more high-level athletics community and her running flourished.
Back in the US, she graduated with a degree from Harvard University and her running prospered in the American college system.
She was the subject of some jesting after the race – a Harvard graduate who miscounted up to six, but explained: “My brain was so addled on that last lap.”