Throughout her 20s, Brittney Reese ranked high on the list of America’s most dominant track and field athletes. One of the greatest long jumpers of all time, Reese finished fifth at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, won gold at the 2012 Olympics in London, took silver at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and since 2009 has seven golds from indoor and outdoor IAAF World Championships.
Now 31, Reese believes there’s more where that came from.
“I feel like I’m great,” she said Saturday. “Practices are going good. (The Olympics in) 2020 is probably going to be it for me, but I still feel like I’ve got a lot more left in me to win some more medals.”
Reese came to Lubbock over the weekend to compete in the Texas Tech Classic and Multis, where she won the long jump.
Reese’s situation serves as proof that there’s always work to do, even for the most successful athletes. Reese fouled on four of her six attempts while winning the World Championships gold medal last year in London. And again on Saturday, she was frustrated with scratches on her first two attempts and her next to last. She won on her last jump, going 21 feet, 6 3/4 inches to overtake Canadian record holder and Olympian Christabel Nettey.
Reese said she needs to figure out a way to minimize all the fouls she’s had lately.
The U.S. indoor championships are Feb. 16-18 at Albuquerque and the IAAF World Championships are March 2-4 at Birmingham, England.
“That’s the next big thing,” Reese said. “I don’t feel like I had my rhythm here today, and I think I need a little bit more attempts. So I’ll probably go to New Mexico next weekend, throw in maybe, like, three jumps just to make sure I’ve got my rhythm in getting ready for USAs.”
Reese grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, won two NCAA championships competing for Ole Miss and continued to train there for several years after college. Her career flourished the whole time. Reese set the American indoor long jump record of 23-8 3/4 in 2012, and last year she became the first woman to win four outdoor world titles in the same individual event.
She’s had so many career highlights, but Reese said two stand out.
“(The Olympics in) 2012 is one of my greatest moments,” she said, “because in 2008 I missed (a medal) by a couple of places, and I told myself I didn’t want to get left off the podium again, and I worked extremely hard for the next three years in order to get that medal.
“And then the last one is from (the World Championships in) 2017. It’s really close to my heart, because I lost my grandfather in July and had to go compete in August with a heavy heart. So it was really one of the toughest medals I had to get, and that’s a medal that I’ll always remember my grandfather by.”
King David Dunomes, Reese’s maternal grandfather and also a Mississippi resident, was 86.
After Reese took her victory lap in London, she revealed the back side of her bib, on which she’d written “Believe in yourself” and “RIP Paw Paw” and drawn hearts.
“He was the reason why I do track and field, to be honest,” said Reese, who also distinguished herself as a basketball player at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. “He was the one that put me in the sport and was at all the events and everything that I had going on. He’s a real sports fan, so he was at everything.”
The year before in Rio, her U.S. teammate Tianna Bartoletta denied Reese a second consecutive Olympic gold.
“I felt good,” Reese said. “It’s just, I got nipped at the end, which is kind of my fault, but in Rio, it was fun. I enjoyed myself. I still came home with something, so I couldn’t be upset. I went through a lot that year coming back from an injury, so I was real pleased with my silver medal.”
Reese was among a group from the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center that made the trip to Lubbock. The Chula Vista center in a San Diego suburb replaced the Olympic Training Center in January 2017.
Like other coaches and high-level athletes who have visited Lubbock in the past three weeks, Reese got a favorable first impression of Texas Tech’s new Sports Performance Center.
“It was close to home,” she said. “I wanted to come find a small meet or something like that where I can establish my rhythm. A lot of my training partners also came here, which was a big factor for me, for my coach for being here. But I really enjoyed it. The runway is really fast and gives a lot of great bounce, so most likely I’ll be back soon.”
Reese said she’d heard about the Sports Performance Center, and “I’m glad I came. They did a great job putting everything together. The meet ran smoothly. Everything was on time, which is really, really important for a track meet. But overall, I loved it.”
