Former WSU sprinter CJ Allen chased his Olympic dream all the way to Paris. He must overcome stacked 400-meter hurdles field to medal.

If you’ve felt beaten over the head with the phrase “Olympic dream” this past week, strap on a helmet. Because here it comes again.

CJ Allen makes no apologies for running the concept into the ground.

“This has been cultivated since I was a kid,” he said. “I remember comments I made to my mom about wanting to be there one day, without any idea of what it would take. Even through high school, when I wasn’t that good, my coach gave me a printout of the Olympic ‘A’ standard and said, ‘Think you can hit that?’ I hadn’t even made the league meet at that point.”

Now he’s made it to the in-a-league-of-their-own meet.

Track and field begins its run at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on Thursday, and foremost among the Inland Northwest connections is Allen, a 29-year-old Washington State University graduate who is grateful to be a part of it and very much driven not to be merely a part of it.

His game: the 400-meter hurdles, in which racing begins with heats on Monday. Semifinals will be run Wednesday, with the final on Aug. 9 at 12:45 p.m.

It will be the most perilous gantlet in the event’s history, though of course Allen has already survived one similarly fraught: the U.S. Olympic Trials.

America’s all-or-nothing, on-this-given-day-and-no-other exercise in attrition claimed its share of victims last month in Eugene. Athing Mu, the 2020 women’s 800 gold medalist, saw her hopes of a repeat take a cruel fall. World champion throwers Brooke Andersen and Laulauga Tausaga-Collins failed to get a fair mark in qualifying. Allen was among the favorites to make the team in his specialty, but needed to hold off fast-closing Trevor Bassitt and Chris Anderson to finish second.

There were the usual calls to make the system more forgiving.

“It is incredibly stressful,” Allen acknowledged. “You could run a PR and have three other guys do it and you’re off the team. That’s happened to me before. It’s scary when even being at your best might not be enough.

“Though it might seem unfair to people, maybe the reason we’re the greatest team in the world is that we’re battle-tested.”

Allen thinks of himself in the same vein.

Though he was a state champion at North Mason High School and twice Pac-12 champ at WSU, Allen’s performances did not scream “Olympic team!” A previous Coug in the event, Jeshua Anderson, won the NCAA title three times and seemed on the fast track to the Games. But Anderson never made it through the trials in 2012 and 2016. Allen, the grinder, got through in his second try.

“The craziest thing about him is his consistency – and I mean his consistent improvement,” said his younger brother, Corey, who also ran track at WSU. “You’ll see guys who put up an amazing time one year and then fall back. Once he broke 50 seconds, he was consistent in the 49s. When he broke 49, he was consistent in the 48s.”

After breaking 48 seconds last summer – twice, with 47.58 being the fastest – this has been the first year of his competitive career that Allen hasn’t improved on his best. But then, the season is hardly over.

And if there’s a time to dial up the fastest race of one’s life, this is it.

What Paris did in bringing together writers of legend in the 1920s, it’s doing with hurdlers in the 2020s. Never has Allen’s event summoned the gathering of talent it will see next week.

It isn’t just the three fastest men in history – Karsten Warholm (45.94), Rai Benjamin (46.17) and Alison dos Santos (46.29), who finished in that order in the last Olympics. Ten of the fastest 30 of all time are entered, though none who’ve run faster than 47 seconds. The sport’s most diligent handicapper, Track and Field News, has Allen picked to finish fifth.

“We’ve seen times I never expected in my lifetime,” he said. “I’ve had friends tell me, ‘If only you’d run five years ago …’ and, well, maybe. But I’m living in history, and I’m pushed to be better because the standard has been raised so much higher. I prefer where I’m at than for it to be a cakewalk or not as competitive.”

So how does Allen handicap the top of the field?

“I’ve been competing against Rai forever and he’s done so much for our sport,” he said. “Last year, he had the fastest times in the world in both the flat 400 and the 400 hurdles. That’s an insane level of talent.

“Alison, he’s 6-foot-7 and takes 12 steps between hurdles 3 and 6 while most of us are running 13s. He’s taking an entire stride less down the backstretch.

“Karsten is simply the fastest man in history. I never thought I’d see a 45-second 400 hurdles – and that’s what it took for him to beat Rai in Tokyo.”

CJ Allen? Well, he’s for sure the fastest chiropractor in the field, having finished his degree in that study with honors last fall. Even during his Olympic preparations, he was dealing with real estate brokers and making other preparations to open his practice in Atlanta with partner Allen Eckles – just as he willed his way to world class while studying for his doctorate.

Yet he’s not going to bet against himself any more than he’ll peg his devotion to the sport to a mere medal.

“It’s all about something I call willful sacrifice,” he said. “And I want people to see my story and know the only person that can hold you back is you. It doesn’t have to be going to the Olympics or becoming a doctor. It’s finding something you’re passionate about and being willing to commit to it.

“You’re never going to regret facing up to something you love. I’ve been doing this for 19 years and it seems so crazy to say that. And whatever else you want to throw on top of that, it’s OK. Sometimes you’re going to fail chasing that dream and passion. Just keep going.”