The Most Impressive World Championship Team Isn't a Country. It's a Brand. |
 | | Chet Strange for The New York Times |
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Dathan Ritzenhein, the coach of On Athletics Club, was juggling a couple of jobs on a brisk morning this spring. As members of his elite distance-running team logged hard miles on some deserted back roads outside Boulder, Colo., Ritzenhein seemed determined to murder his pickup truck's transmission. |
The team, also known as O.A.C., had splintered into packs, and Ritzenhein was navigating the roads like Max Verstappen, hopping in and out of his truck so he could supply refreshments while yelling out his runners' splits. |
Ritzenhein, 40, pulled over in time to see a group that included Olli Hoare, one of the world's top milers, and Joe Klecker, an Olympic 10,000-meter runner, crest a hill and come into view. Ritzenhein grabbed several water bottles from the truck's cargo bed. |
"You guys want something to drink?" he yelled as they reached for the bottles without breaking stride. "Just toss them at the next corner and I'll pick them up!" |
They ran off and, soon enough, began chucking their bottles into some roadside shrubs. |
"YUP!" Ritzenhein shouted. "I SEE 'EM!" |
He jumped back into his truck. Andrew Wheating, O.A.C.'s content and operations manager, was enjoying the production from the passenger seat. |
"We need to get you a sports car," Wheating said. |
"No, we need to get one of those 15-passenger Sprinter vans," Ritzenhein said. "I'm telling you: an all-black Sprinter van with a white O.A.C. logo on it. I think that would be too good." |
Olivier Bernhard, a former triathlete who, in 2010, co-founded On, a high-end athletics apparel company, is fond of referring to a team's "magic," which can seem like a foreign concept when it comes to a solitary sport like distance running. |
But in the three years since Bernhard's company made a pandemic-era gamble by forming O.A.C., which is now made up of 13 athletes from seven countries, the Boulder-based team has emerged as one of the most dominant forces in track and field — and one that will be on display starting Saturday at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest. |
Already this year, O.A.C. has big achievements. Hoare, 26, broke the Australian record for the men's 1,500. Yared Nuguse, a 24-year-old Notre Dame product, broke the American record in the men's indoor mile, while Mario Garcia Romo, also 24, set the Spanish record — in the same race. |
The list goes on: Alicia Monson, a 25-year-old Wisconsinite who plans to double in the women's 5,000 and 10,000 in Budapest, owns the American record in both events. And Hellen Obiri, a two-time Olympic medalist from Kenya who joined the team last year, won the Boston Marathon in April in her debut at the race. |
"No one can be so good that they're on a pedestal on our team," said Klecker, one of eight team members who will be competing in Budapest. "I mean, even Hellen comes in — a world champion — and obviously you respect everything she's done, but she goes to practice just like everyone else." |
Following a morning workout this spring, the team gathered around Ritzenhein. He interrupted a spirited discussion about two new tattoos on Garcia Romo's shoulders — he had drawn inspiration from Roman armor — to deliver good news. A long-anticipated makeover of O.A.C.'s gym, located in an otherwise nondescript, Boulder-area strip mall, was nearly complete. He warned them about stray nails. |
Read the full article here. |
How Transgender Runner Nikki Hiltz Rose to the Top of Track |
 | | Nikki Hiltz publicly shared their gender identity as transgender and nonbinary in 2021.Caitlin O'Hara for The New York Times |
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A transgender pride flag appeared in the stands of Hayward Stadium in Eugene, Ore., just as the middle distance runner Nikki Hiltz stepped onto the track. |
The pink, blue and white flag was held overhead, then waved as Hiltz, who identifies as transgender and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, made their way to the far side of the track for the 1,500-meter final of the U.S. National Championships in July. |
"It was a statement," Hiltz said. "It reminded me that this is bigger than just me." |
After 4 minutes 3.10 seconds, Hiltz broke the tape with an explosive final kick to overpower a stacked field that included Athing Mu, the 800 gold medalist at the Tokyo Games; Cory McGee and Heather MacLean, Olympic 1,500 runners; and Sinclaire Johnson, the 2022 national champion in the event. |
Hiltz had gotten to this point, they said, partially because of the community around them that cheers not because of their fast times but because of what and who they stand for, starting with themselves. |
"I just feel like the L.G.B.T.Q. community needed a win," Hiltz, 28, said soon after becoming the national champion. A smile was painted across their face. This was a ticket to the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, yes, but it was more. |
Doing so has brought Hiltz joy in their community and anguish as they bare witness to an onslaught of bills placing restrictions on transgender youth, limiting sports participation, gender-affirming medical care and bathroom access. |
Legislation has directly targeted adults' health care, too. Bills introduced in Oklahoma and South Carolina would make it a felony to provide hormonal or surgical transition treatment to transgender people younger than 26. |
In March, the international governing body of track and field, World Athletics, effectively barred transgender women from competing at the highest levels of the sport. The exclusion, similar to rules set by the world governing body for swimming in June 2022, would apply to "male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty." |
The rules, which are mostly targeted toward transgender women, are some of the strictest in international sports. |
For Hiltz to continue competing at the top level of women's fields, they cannot pursue gender-affirming care, meaning, specifically, taking testosterone. They hope to one day have top surgery, a gender-affirming double mastectomy, but at this point the goal would be to wait until they have had the opportunity to qualify for and race in the Paris Olympics in 2024. |
"Right now, competing in the women's category still feels OK for me and my gender and where I'm at with that journey," Hiltz said. "But the second it doesn't, I'm not going to sacrifice myself for my sport. I'm going to choose the relationship with myself before my relationship with track and field." |
It is a sensitive conversation Hiltz has with a frequency that would make even the most media savvy athletes freeze. Hiltz is not just asked about their race strategy, their training or their reaction to their finish time. They are also asked to explain, if not justify, their existence, and contextualize it within this era of culture wars. What does this win mean for them? What does it mean for the entire queer community, or for representation at large? |
"I've talked probably more about my trans identities than actually unpacking the race," Hiltz said the afternoon after winning the national title. That is important, they said, but they added, "I am a nerdy athlete at the end of the day; I want to talk about tactics." |
Tactically, this race began some three years ago, when Hiltz changed just about everything. |
Read the full article here. |
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