(Courtesy: WesternCarolinaU)
Manteo Mitchell reached the halfway point of the opening leg of the 4 X 400 meter semifinals at the London Olympics, when he took an awkward step, felt a twinge and let out a battle cry in pain.
“I wanted to just lie down,” said Mitchell after the race. “It felt like somebody literally just snapped my leg in half."
Despite suffering a broken left fibula, Mitchell somehow forged on. The 25-year old from Shelby, N.C. continued to run, finishing his split in 46.1 seconds. If Mitchell quit, the U.S. relay team would have been qualified. Instead, their second-place finish earned the team a spot in the finals where they captured a silver medal behind the Bahamas. Following the Olympics, President Obama described Mitchell’s courageousness as one of his favorite moments of the games.
Nine months into his comeback, Mitchell appears to have returned to pre-injury form after declaring himself 100 percent healthy. At last month’s USA vs. the World 4 X 400 at the Penn Relays, Mitchell led the USA Red team to victory over Jamaica with a strong showing in the second leg. Mitchell split of 44.8 tied Tony McQuay for the fastest among the four American sprinters, as the team finished in 3:00.91 and edged the Jamaicans by 0.24 seconds.
Mitchell will race next at the IAAF World Championship in Ponce, Puerto Rico on May 18.
“Everyone thinks it’s a comeback, but I call it a come up,” Mitchell told TeamUSA.org. “I’m not really coming back from anything. I’m just rising to the occasion again.”
During the final stretches of his leg in the London semifinals, Mitchell focused on lifting his knees as he valiantly gutted out the final meters. In an electric atmosphere, Mitchell’s adrenaline carried him the rest of the way. The former Western Carolina sprinter’s resiliency earned him the admiration of his peers worldwide.
"It's an incredible story," sprinter Darvis Patton told the Philadelphia Inquirer before the Penn Relays. "It's like a movie. You have to understand, we stop running when we feel a cramp. We stop running when we feel a little tightness. And this guy kept running for 200 meters with a . . . broken leg."
Last September, Mitchell met President Obama along with a number of his Team USA teammates at a ceremony at the White House. When the president lauded Mitchell for his efforts, the sprinter described it as the highlight of his career.
Since the Olympics, Mitchell has visited more than 35 schools to spread his inspirational story to students throughout the nation. Mitchell is training up to the World Championships in Moscow in mid-August.
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