We saw Maria Michta rally for a strong second half in London a year ago almost to the day at the 2012 Olympics and she used a similar strategy at this year’s World Championships at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
Michta trailed Oregon’s Erin Gray for almost 16 kilometers of the 20 kilometer race, but turned the jets on when it counted most.
Michta finished the 12.4-mile event in 1:33:51, good enough for 34th place overall and first among American athletes. There were 62 competitors from 32 countries.
“Certainly I’d have liked to place higher, but this was still the second fastest 20K of my life, so I’ve got to be happy about that,” Michta told a stringer from Newsday after the race. “This can’t quite match London in a lot of different ways. I had my whole family there rooting for me. The atmosphere there [the race started and finished near Buckingham Palace] was amazing. But this was still pretty good.”
Russians Elena Lashminova won the event in 1:27:08.
RELATED: View complete IAF World Championship results
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro