American sprinter Freddie Crittenden is receiving a mixture of criticism and praise for deliberately throwing the Olympic men’s 110m hurdles on Sunday.
Crittenden booked himself a ticket to to Paris with a US trials victory in 12.93 seconds, the second fastest time by any runner in 2024 behind only teammate Grant Holloway.
That time also would have been the quickest qualifying time in Paris.
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Instead, the 30-year-old Crittenden jogged over the line in a leisurely 18.27 seconds, some 4.39 seconds and about 30 metres behind the next slowest in his heat.
No other runner even clocked a time worse than 13.99 seconds.
It raised eyebrows for obvious reasons, not least those of Nine athletics commentator Gerard Whateley.
“What on earth happened at the start?” Whateley said.
“That’s perplexing.”
Australian athletics great Tamsyn Lewis Manou added: “He’s just popped up and not even tried.”
It looked like a very deliberate decision — and that’s because it was.
Crittenden has been battling a minor injury, from which he wanted an extra couple of days to recover, so he took advantage of the newly introduced repechage rounds.
All athletes who don’t make it through the heats in track events now have the safety net of the repechage rounds, which gives them another chance to qualify for the semis.
Jogging through the heats, being careful not to get disqualified, was a calculated decision that Crittenden made in conjunction with his coach, as he explained post-race.
“It was an intentional choice,” Crittenden told NBC.
“Everyone gets through to the repechage. So, I decided to just, not make an emotional choice, make a smart choice, give my body time to recover a little bit from being aggravated, lean on my medical doctors, lean on God, and just wait for the repechage round, come out here and try to kill it in the repechage round.”
He has been told by the US medical team that his niggle is so minor that it’s not even really an injury.
“It’s just a lack of activation in my muscle and that’s causing pain and discomfort,” he said.
“The plan was to come out here and get through the round as long as I didn’t get disqualified or hit any hurdles.
‘The idea was to get through and I’ll have another opportunity to run in the repechage round.
“I wanted to get here and make sure it didn’t feel any worse and make it through and give it everything I’ve got on Tuesday.”
He said if there were no repechage round, he would have given his full effort.
“Balls to the wall, run as hard as I could, crashed and burned, whatever happens,” he added.
Some thought it was genius, like NBC, which called it a “200 IQ move”.
“Freddie Crittenden jogs through his hurdle heat knowing he will automatically qualify for the repechage round,” the outlet said.
Others suggested it was “breaching the spirit of the Games”, and even disrespectful.
“Freddie Crittenden is the reason that repechage shouldn’t exist. Using his heat as a warm up. Ridiculous,” Ben Jurance said.