There are Olympic sports with impenetrable scoring systems (judo comes to mind), Olympic sports that mash up seemingly unrelated activities involving weapons, horses and swimming into one competition (modern pentathlon), and Olympic sports that involve twirling long ribbons (rhythmic gymnastics).
But there’s one Olympic sport that tops all of that weirdness because it asks a simple question: What would happen if we took a track race and added a few strategically placed moats along the route?
That sport is steeplechase, where runners must leap not just over regular barriers but also barriers backed with small pools of water. And on Friday night, you can catch the top American male steeplechasers in the U.S. Olympic trials final at 7:42 p.m. Eastern time on NBC Sports Network.
Steeplechase has its origins in an equine event in 18th-century Ireland, as riders would race from town to town using church steeples — at the time the most visible point in each town — as starting and ending points (hence the name steeplechase). Riders would have to surmount the various obstacles of the Irish countryside: stone walls, fences, ditches, streams, etc.
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About a century later, the sport was adapted for purely human use in Britain, with athletes running from town to town, steeple to steeple, while surmounting the obstacles without the assistance of a horse. In 1879, it was turned into a track event at the English Championships, and the event has been held in varying distances as a men’s event at every Olympics since the 1900 Paris Games. (It became an Olympic women’s event only in 2008.) The prestigious Diamond League eliminated steeplechase (among several other sports) in 2020, part of an effort to shorten championship meets and keep audiences engaged.
In its current form, runners must clear 28 fixed barriers (36 inches high for men, 30 for women) and seven water jumps over the course of the 3,000-meter race. Runners try to surmount the 12-foot-long water pits by planting a foot atop the barrier to propel themselves over all or most of the water hazard, which is nearly 28 inches at its deepest.
It takes an impressive amount of strength and timing to get it just right, lest a runner make too much of a time-consuming splash. Plus some other intangibles, like improvising when you almost lose one of your sneakers.
“I think it just takes a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of guts,” Emma Coburn, the top U.S. female steeplechase runner, told USA Today in 2016, when she won a bronze medal at the Rio Olympics. “I think all track and field events do, but there’s something about the steeplechase. There’s just a lot of problems where some drama might occur. If you aren’t a calm person, it might really upset you.”
On Thursday night, Coburn qualified for her third Olympics by winning the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the U.S. Olympic trials. Leah Falland wasn’t so lucky: With only two laps to go, Falland was running with the leaders and on her way to Tokyo when she clipped a barrier and fell; she finished ninth, out of the running.
Indeed, falls can turn surefire winners into also-rans. At a 2015 event in Paris, American Evan Jager was on his way to breaking the eight-minute mark in the 3,000-meter steeplechase — a feat accomplished only 12 times — when he landed awkwardly and fell after cleanly clearing the final barrier. (He still set the American record that stands today.)
“That finish was terrible. It was so awful. It would be like missing a free throw to win a basketball game,” Jager said later.
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