File:Track 2021 Luke Campbell at the Tokyo Games from The Frederick News-Post, August 2, 2021.jpg

Summary

Campbell shatters personal-best time but just misses 400-meter hurdles final at Tokyo Olympics Brunswick High alum takes 5th in heat, 11th overall in semifinals, where only the top 8 advanced By Joshua R. Smith from the Frederick News-Post, August 1, 2021

The concentration in Luke Campbell’s face gave way momentarily to a grimace as he strained toward the finish line during the second semifinal of the 400-meter hurdles Sunday in Tokyo. He was emptying the tank in hopes of beating long odds to reach the final of this brutal specialty of his — nearly on the opposite side of the world from where he took up hurdling as a Brunswick High School sophomore in 2010. The Olympics brought out a personal best in the 26-year-old as he sprinted his lap out of Lane 8 while negotiating 10 obstacles in a mostly empty National Stadium. But even though he’d leveraged this ultimate stage amid elite competition to chop more than a half a second off the fastest time of his career, he was left just on the outside of the top eight who advanced to compete for the medals. Campbell — representing Germany, where his late mother, Anne, was born — finished Sunday in 48.62 seconds (his previous best was 49.14), taking fifth in his heat. But it wound up being the 11th fastest time among the 24 competitors and three semifinals sections. Only the top eight overall reached the final, slated for Tuesday night in Japan. Regardless, it represented a high point for Campbell — who dealt with losing his mother to cancer and fought through multiple injuries over the past 17 months to arrive at this moment. A group of his family and friends nervously, proudly took in the occasion at a gathering hosted by his sister, Chelaya Campbell, in Brunswick. They watched on the Peacock TV app as the race went off around 8:15 a.m. EST (9:15 p.m. in Japan). Robin Campbell, Luke’s brother, said he experienced “so many emotions” during the broadcast. “I’m just super proud of him and what he has accomplished,” Robin Campbell texted to the News-Post on Sunday afternoon. “I talked to Luke this morning and he said he was on Cloud 9. Yeah he would have liked to get a medal, but he did get a new PR [personal record].” In the week leading up to the Olympics, Luke Campbell said he held high hopes for himself at the Games. “I expect and hope to run well, and to hold my own against the others,” he said in an email to the News-Post on July 13. “It wouldn’t feel right for me if I wasn’t expecting myself to be in the final and to win, regardless of who I’m running against. I think that’s a really important mindset to have if you’re competing at the Olympics, but of course a healthy dose of realism is also important. “I feel confident however in my abilities and the training that I’ve done up to this point and am excited to see how it ends.” And why not? An edema in his leg and foot and a torn calf kept him idle for nearly all of 2020 as the pandemic caused the cancellation of most track events, but he’d performed strongly and consistently this season despite a delay in his training. He entered the Olympics as the eighth-ranked 400-meter hurdler in Europe. “The start [of his season] was somewhat slow, because of my injury in December/January, so I needed more time to get into form and to get used to running 400 hurdles again,” he said in the email last month. “I feel confident going into the Games. I’ve shown noticeable improvement each week and am positive that I’m in better shape now than I was a year before.” Before his injury-marred 2020, the former Brunswick state champ and 11-time national champion at Division III Salisbury University made it to the semis at the 2019 World Championships. But he ended up much farther back in the pack (21 out of 24) at that large-scale event in Doha, Qatar. However, he put himself squarely in the mix Sunday in Tokyo. His lane assignment meant he’d be starting the race by running ahead of seven of his eight competitors until the stagger was made up after about 200 meters. As the field began coming to him at that juncture, Campbell clipped the fifth barrier — something that could spell catastrophe for any hurdler, as was seen later that night in the third heat when Jamaica’s Jaheel Hyde, near the lead, stumbled to the track and finished dead last. But Campbell didn’t appear to even break stride after the minor contact, pushing onward as Brazil’s Alison dos Santos motored past him to victory in 47.31. Shortly after Campbell crossed the finish line Sunday, he could be seen in the online broadcast squatting on the track and looking up, perhaps at results that were posted somewhere in the stadium. By that point — even with one more heat still to go, even seeing that he’d just shattered his top time — Campbell was already in ninth place overall, meaning he likely knew soon after his race that he hadn’t quite done enough. But his Tokyo showing was a strong one (he also ran a 49.19 Thursday in the preliminaries), providing him with more to build on as he continues his career in Germany, the once-foreign country where he has lived since 2017. No, he did not medal. But in Tokyo his Olympic dreams became reality. Those dreams were probably nonexistent when he joined the Brunswick track team 11 years ago. They even remained far-fetched after a historic career at small college. Now, though, if Campbell maintains his health and rate of development, faster times, another Olympic appearance and maybe even a berth in his main event’s final could be in his future. Let’s not skip forward too quickly, though: According to Robin Campbell, Luke said he might get a chance to run on Germany’s 4x400 relay team. The first round of heats for that begins Friday, and Luke will remain in Tokyo instead of returning directly to Germany. So, this Olympics might not yet be over for Campbell.