Charlotte hurdler Gabbi Cunningham is ready to turn fourth place into Olympic gold
In the Olympic track events and the run-up to qualify for them, fourth place is considered the cruelest spot.
The first three finishers in every event all win a medal of some color and acclaim of some significance. The fourth-place finisher wins nothing and is dogged by questions of what might have been.
But for 23-year-old hurdler Gabbi Cunningham — who starred in track in high school at Mallard Creek in Charlotte and then in college at N.C. State — fourth place has turned golden.
Cunningham’s fourth-place finish in the women’s 100 hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June had a happy and complicated ending. Because of another competitor’s later disqualification, Cunningham was retroactively bumped up to third place — added to the U.S. Olympic team 12 days after the fact. She begins her competition in Tokyo on Friday with the preliminary heats. If Cunningham advances, she will run in the semifinals Saturday and then the 100 hurdles final on Sunday.
Cunningham’s final race at the Olympic Trials turned into a cauldron of mixed feelings. She ran her personal best time of 12.53 seconds, which was thrilling. Yet she missed third place by an eyelash. But she knew that second-place finisher Brianna McNeil — allowed to race only because she was appealing her five-year “tampering with the results management process” anti-doping suspension — could eventually be banned from Team USA.
“I had the emotions of being happy, because it was a personal best, but then also the emotions of not really knowing how to feel because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Cunningham said in a phone interview before she left for Japan. “The top three got an American flag, and they took a victory lap. And they gave them flowers. And they stood on the medal stand. I was kind of sad. I knew I could potentially be on the team, but I wasn’t going to get that moment.”
On July 17, her old high school gave her that moment.
Cunningham had an Olympic send-off party that day on the track at Mallard Creek, attended by former coaches, classmates and friends. They praised her and wished her luck in Tokyo, where she will enter not as a favorite but definitely as a contender.
Find a way to find a way
Cunningham has graduated from N.C. State, but she continues to train at her alma mater in Raleigh. Her hurdles coach at N.C. State is Allen Johnson, who knows exactly what Cunningham is feeling right now.
Johnson, a UNC graduate, was a three-time Olympian and an Olympic gold medalist in the 110 men’s hurdles in 1996 in Atlanta. Of Cunningham’s chances at making the podium, Johnson said: “She definitely has a chance at a medal. I mean obviously, where she’s sitting right now, it’s an outside chance. But she has shown over the last two years that she can find a way to find a way. So she is going in with the right mindset.”
While N.C. State has had some standout track and field athletes, Cunningham’s appearance in the Olympics is a rarity for the school. Cunningham is the first Wolfpack graduate to compete in the Olympics and the second program participant ever to compete for Team USA. Joan Benoit Samuelson won the women’s marathon in 1984 for America and did once attend N.C. State, but she later graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine.
With a mom who was a cheerleader in college and a dad who played some college football, Cunningham has good genes. She compounded that advantage with a strong work ethic, winning dozens of races in the sprints and the hurdles for Mallard Creek after moving to Charlotte from Maryland before her sophomore year in high school.
At N.C. State, Cunningham ping-ponged back and forth between the sprints and the hurdles, too, until finally her times favored the hurdles enough that she started to concentrate mostly on trying on those.
‘Did you tell your parents?’
At the Olympic Trials, Cunningham ran three consecutive personal bests in the preliminaries, semifinals and finals to make the U.S. team. She will need a similar performance in Tokyo to earn a medal in a deep event for Team USA where Keni Harrison — who is from Clayton, N.C., 20 miles southeast of Raleigh — finished first in the U.S. Olympic Trials and is one of the gold-medal favorites.
Anna Cockrell, also from Charlotte and a Providence Day graduate, nearly made the team as well in the event. Cockrell finished in 12.58 seconds, compared to Cunningham’s 12.53, but did make it in the 400 hurdles.
When Cunningham got the call that she would be competing in the Olympics on July 2, she wasn’t totally unprepared. McNeal’s appeal had been denied by then. But Cunningham didn’t get the call until she was in the middle of a practice, and after she got it, she wanted to redouble her efforts and continue the workout.
“Did you tell your parents?” Johnson asked her.
Not yet, Cunningham said sheepishly, and so he had her let them know before they continued.
Then Cunningham resumed the practice, more determined than ever to turn a fourth-place finish into something wonderful.
This story was originally published July 29, 2021 at 9:59 AM with the headline "Charlotte hurdler Gabbi Cunningham is ready to turn fourth place into Olympic gold."
