Before Val Constien ran down her Olympic dream in Paris, she made sure her old high school coach would be there
Rob Parish flew to Paris to watch his former Battle Mountain athlete chase a medal
Ashley Landis/AP photo
Sometime after the Fourth of July, Rob Parish started shopping for plane tickets to Paris, France.
The Battle Mountain assistant principal and cross-country coach knew he was entering the busiest time of his work year, but he’d been trying to get to the Olympics ever since the job he’d lined up for the 2000 Sydney Games fell through. Plus, former athlete Val Constien was fresh off posting the third-fastest seed time for the 3,000-meter steeplechase.
It seemed like now or never. But before he worked out the logistics, he decided to phone his former athlete.
“Just to get her temperature on it,” the coach said. “I wanted to see if she’d be excited about the idea (of me coming to watch) or lukewarm.”
Constien called him out.
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“She said, ‘You have to go,'” Parish recalled. “‘When are you going to have an ex-athlete that’s going to the Olympics that has a chance to medal?'”
Good point.
As an unsponsored Tokyo Olympian (an event no one could view in person), Constien surprised some in the running world in 2021. She shocked everyone, however, with her meteoric redemptive rise over the last year. After tearing her ACL in her Diamond League debut in May 2023, the 28-year-old progressed from crutches to conducting AlterG anti-gravity treadmill sessions to ripping off a surprising steeplechase time of 9 minutes, 27.22 seconds — 13 seconds under the U.S. Olympic trials standard and just four ticks away from the international Olympic standard — in her return to the track this spring. She didn’t stop there.
Her 9:14.29 at the Pre Classic on May 25 solidified her status as a favorite to make the United States team. A month later, she blasted an Olympic Trials record of 9:03.22 in Eugene, Oregon, announcing herself as a legitimate medal contender.
“Parish called me and he was kind of mulling it over and I was just straight with him,” Constien said. “I just kind of put his feet to the fire a little bit and was like, ‘Look, this is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I don’t know why you’re debating.”
And so, coach came to the meet. Just like old times.
“You have this connection of 15 years and watching them grow from a little kid .. .I was having trouble determining like, am I a fan here? Am I coach? It was so interesting having your former athlete there,” Parish said of watching Constien in the Stade de France alongside 70,000 fans. “It felt like you were watching a family member. You just wanted so badly for that person to do well for themselves.”
There wouldn’t be a fairy-tale ending. Constien — who picked up COVID-19 between the trials and the Summer Games, managed to sneak into the finals with a 9:16.33 that felt much harder than it should have. It was a tell-tale sign she wasn’t at 100%. She hadn’t been for a while. During the vital training block between Eugene and Paris, Constien said she didn’t tweak her training volume or intensity very much while recovering from the illness.
“But the problem was that everything I was doing felt horrible,” she said. “All my long runs felt bad, all my track workouts felt bad (and) my easy days were way harder than they would have been had I not been compromised.”
Constien left for Paris burdened by every runner’s worst nightmare: carrying both the weight of medal expectations and a debilitating illness — unknown to spectators and supporters. She remained positive anyway.
“At the end of the day, if you’re sick, you can’t fake it,” she said. “But I didn’t want to put myself in a bad place mentally to completely fall apart. I think if I had had any other attitude, I might not have had the mental toughness to even make it to the final.”
Though she wasn’t as sharp as she’d been in June, Constien went out with the leaders’ near world-record pace in the final.
“She was not going to the Olympics to get eighth or 10th. She was going to try and medal,” Parish said. “And so, even though she didn’t feel the best, she still put herself in position to do that. And maybe on a different day, without COVID before, it would have gone differently.”
The 2:55.1-second opening kilometer came with a price for Constien, who finished in 15th in 9:34.08. Bahrain’s Winfred Yavi struck late to win in an Olympic record of 8:52.76 as defending Olympic champion Peruth Chemutai (8:53.34) took the silver and Kenya’s Faith Cherotich (8:55.15) won bronze.
“The fact that I had the mental fortitude to really put myself out there in the final and give it a shot, to try my best, to put myself in the mix — I think it just shows how much I believe in myself and how much of a gamer I am,” Constien said. “Yeah, of course, I’m disappointed. But I think one of the reasons this disappointment isn’t that bad is because I legitimately did everything that I could — there’s no regrets.”
“We’re really proud of her. Just to make it,” Parish added. “Everything she’s accomplished — the knee, the trials — everything is so special.”
Parish said even when Constien was in high school, she always had a knack for letting adversity bounce off of her with a smile.
“She had a really positive attitude before the Olympics, before the trials and even after the Olympics,” he said. “I think she realizes what she’s done is so special and just because she had a race that was below her expectations, it’s not going to tarnish what she’s accomplished. And I think she’s really mature in that way that she views it as a journey, as a whole — not that she’s tied to one 3,000-meter race.”
Constien said her resilience has been refined during her lowest moments.
“I think having something so horrible like tearing your ACL happen really puts everything into perspective,” she said. “Looking back on it, last year was horrible. I was just inside all summer. I was too injured to even go for walks or hikes. I was just limping around. My quality of life was bad … the fact that I even had a shot to even race a steeplechase this year, the fact that I made it to the Olympics this year, is amazing.”
A truly French experience
After calling in every favor at work and with family, Parish and his wife, Kelli, soaked up six days in Paris.
“We didn’t stop,” Parish said. “We got up early, we ran to events, we went to all the events we could, we got to every event super early and stayed late.”
In addition to track, the couple watched swimming, cycling, handball, water polo and more. They gathered with thousands of fans at watch parties, which ran late into the night at various historic sites.
“We soaked up every single second of Olympics that we could,” said Parish, who was blown away by the “uniquely French” aura surrounding every aspect of the Games.
“The French went above and beyond to make it artistic. That’s what the big takeaway was — how interested and engaged the French were,” he continued. “They hit it out of the park. It felt like every person in the city — on the metro, walking on the street — was personally connected to the Olympics.”
Parish’s moment came about an hour before Constien’s race, when he went down to the track himself.
“To be involved in running since I was 13 and finally be at the Olympics, at the ground floor,” he said. “That was an emotional moment for sure.”
Looking ahead to the Rome Diamond League
Constien’s clarity and confidence stand out in her assessment of the Olympics.
“Well, obviously, I think if I hadn’t been recovering from COVID, if I’d been feeling better, I probably could have run a lot faster,” she said when asked how she’s been processing Paris. “But, the great thing about running is that there’s always another race around the corner.”
Constien will line up at the Rome Diamond League on Friday. Her goal is to place well enough — she thinks top-5 will suffice — to earn a spot in the Diamond League final in Brussels on Sept. 13-14.
“It’s going to be a pretty competitive race,” Constien said of the event, which features Chemutai as well as American Courtney Wayment, who placed second at the trials behind Constien. Even if she doesn’t make it to Brussels, there’s a chance Constien could run the historic 5th Avenue Mile in New York City on Sept. 8.
“There’s a lot of really fun things going on and however I do in Rome, there will be a very exciting race to end my season,” she said.
Despite telling Parish the Olympics are a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ phenomenon, Constien has a chance to go a third time — on home soil — in 2028.
“I think that, if I’m still a contender — because you know, you never know when you turn 30, sometimes you can keep going but sometimes it becomes a lot harder — but I think that if I can keep training until that Olympic cycle, that would be amazing,” she said. “That’s definitely the goal, to keep training.”
The most important thing Constien’s ACL ordeal has taught her is “consistency,” she said.
“So, moving forward, these next couple years leading into the next Olympic cycle, I’m just going to do everything I can to be healthy and be happy and be consistent,” Constien continued. “There’s some positive changes that are going to happen and I’m really excited.”
Parish and Constien didn’t connect in person in Paris, but upon returning to her Boulder home, Constien combed through her slammed inbox and eventually called up her high school coach. He thanked her for calling him out a month prior.
“He was just so grateful to have me convince him to come,” Constien said. “We’ve been friends for 12 years at this point. That’s a really long relationship.”
“I couldn’t let go and just be a fan, which I’m sure any coach in that situation would feel the same way,” Parish said when asked to reflect on what it was like watching a former athlete run on the world’s grandest stage.
“It was just an amazing moment.”
