Jeremy Taiwo’s Maddening Path to the 2016 Olympic Games

Published by The Seattle Times on August 2, 2016

Four months ago, while every other Olympic track and field hopeful in America was either training feverishly for July’s U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene or prepping for the World indoor championships in Portland as a final tune-up, former UW decathlete Jeremy Taiwo was 1,200 miles away from his Seattle training base, traipsing through the Borrego desert in Southern California on a camping trip that he hoped at the time would help him regroup and refocus.

Making the Rio Olympics had been his sole ambition for the last four years, but as recently as March this year, Jeremy found himself limited by a maddening distal hamstring tendonitis issue that no one seemed to be able to fully diagnose or fix.

He didn’t know if he would be healthy enough to compete in the trials, much less the Olympic Games, and the uncertainty drove him crazy.