Sue McDonald Just Misses World Record in Masters 800 Meters at Olympic Trials

Nobody tripped at the finish line and careened into the scoreboard. No trip to Paris was at stake.

But in a pair of 800-meter exhibition races Sunday at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, thousands were treated to dramatic one-on-one battles to the finish.

Among men and women between 55 and 61 years old.

Sue McDonald and Chris McDonald — unrelated except for grit — won their respective masters races as they prepare for their own world championships in August — in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Sue, 61, missed her own world age-group record by three-tenths of a second — clocking 2 minutes, 22.81 seconds and turning back the challenge of Michelle Rohl, 58, who race-walked in two Olympics.

Chris, 55, battled Carlsbad 5000 age-group champion Christian Cushing-Murray, 56, down the homestretch to win in 2:14.25 to his rival’s 2:15.13.

In a sport (masters track) pioneered in the mid-1960s by San Diego lawyer David Pain, the oldest runners on the Hayward Field track got excited cheers for their two-lap efforts.

• Listen: Meet announcer calls the masters women’s 800-meter race
• Listen: Meet announcer calls the masters men’s 800-meter race

Less than an hour before a women’s 800 semifinal where Olympic champion Athing Mu edged a falling Kate Grace, Sue McDonald and Rohl led from the start, passing the 400-meter mark in just under 71 seconds — world-record pace.

Sue, a Santa Barbara fitness trainer who set nine world age-group records as a 60-year-old last year and was named Female Athlete of the Year by World Masters Athletics, said she was aiming to improve her own world record of 2:22.52.

“I’m just trying to find that perfect race,” she said. “I’m in shape to run really fast, but I’m just kind of playing around with … how fast you go out and, you know, all the different paces.”

Rohl of Mansfield, Pennsylvania, who did the 20K race walk at the 1992 and 1996 Games, said she wasn’t pacing McDonald — and was hoping to challenge the W55 age-group world record of 2:19.63.

“I executed my race plan through 600,” she said, reaching that point in 1:45. “I was supposed to be able to put it down another level on the last 200. My legs didn’t have it.”

A scary moment came 10 minutes after the race when one of McDonald’s clients, Liz Guerrini, suffered an asthma and allergy attack in the media tent.

McDonald said Monday said she checked in with her and Guerrini was doing much better.

“She PR’d by 4 seconds in the meet preceeding this one and yesterday took another 4 seconds off,” McDonald said of the 55-year-old who describes herself as a breast cancer chemotherapy survivor and “proud neurodiversity mom.”

Long Beach resident Guerrini finished fifth in 2:40.83.

On the men’s side, the battle for first came down to a 100-meter dash.

“We both fell apart,” said Cushing-Murray, a high school English teacher and coach in Orange. “I just fell apart more and that’s actually how it’s supposed to be. It’s: Who falls apart the least?”

Cush, as he’s known, ran the 1,500 meters in the 2016 Olympic Trials masters exhibition race. But he’s mainly a cross country specialist — running distances up to 6.2 miles.

He said he ran two half-mile races to qualify for the Trials exhibition. But hadn’t run a serious 800 before then in “maybe 23 years.”

Chris McDonald lives in Niwot, Colorado, where he’s a software executive and entrepreneur.

Thirty years after competing for the University of Colorado, he resumed track after turning 50, aiming to break 5 minutes for the mile. He’s done it many times since, including a 4:59.36 last March at the national masters indoor meet in Chicago (where he took second in the 800 and mile).

McDonald said he was “terrified” about running on the biggest stage of American track. But handled nerves by keeping “everything small” — pretending he was back on his home track in Niwot.

“It was just in my head,” he said. “There was nobody there. There’s nobody in the stadium. I just had to keep it small and run it, you know, 10 meters at a time.”

But he had a “deeper motivation” for beating Cush on Sunday.

“We ran together in a masters mile at the Arcadia, California [High School] Invitational” in April 2023, he said.

“Cush sat on me for 3 1/2 laps and destroyed me in last 200. So when he hit my shoulder with 200 to go [Sunday] I’m like: Not this time! And that’s why I held him off. I knew if he got around me, I might not get it back.”

Cushing-Murray appeared to draw even with McDonald as they entered the home straight with the loud crowd abuzz.

He said in his dreams he thought the race would come down to a final man-on-man sprint.

“Except in my dreams, I won,” he said.

Cushing-Murray doesn’t plan to race until September, but McDonald has “podium” goals this summer — at July’s national masters championships in Sacramento and the world meet in August.

“When I went to Finland two years ago [for another WMA world meet], it was just a dry run to understand the experience,” he said. “I only started racing again when I turned 50, but I had no idea what I was doing.

“Dan King, one of the best masters, and my buddy Todd [Straka, a fellow Boulder Road Runners club member] kind of showed me the ropes and I fell in love with it.”