With Winter Games Underway, U.S. Athletes Like Emma Coburn Have Their Eyes On 2020

When Emma Coburn stormed to a IAAF World Championship win in the 3,000-meter steeplechase race in London last year, she surprised everyone — including herself.

"Winning there wasn't even a goal," Coburn said over the weekend when she was getting ready for an indoor track meet in Boston.

But maybe her victory shouldn't have been viewed as such an upset.

Coburn's career has been a steady series of milestones achieved, starting when she and her brother and sister signed up for a track team when she was in grade school in her hometown, Crested Butte, Colorado. She started winning races, and that led to running in high school — where she won multiple Colorado state championships — and later a scholarship to the University of Colorado, where she was an NCAA champion.

"I was lucky to have coaches that really had a long-term approach to my training," Coburn says. "They never overdid it. They took it really slow and they also pushed my limits a little bit on racing bigger races and getting me out of my comfort zone on some international stuff.

"So had it not been for my high school coach who told me to run in college, or my college coaches who helped me visualize what a career in track could be like, helped me train for both Olympic teams, I wouldn't be here. Every year just the next logical goal was achieved, and 10 years later that led to a world championship gold."

The 27-year-old is targeting another American steeplechase championship in the national meet later this year. Her 2017 win in London gives her a bye into next year's world championship in Doha, Qatar, and then Coburn will try to make her third Olympic team.

But she doesn't plan on that being the end of the line.

"Olympic years are often the bookends of someone's career," Coburn says. "I hope to compete in 2020 [in Tokyo]. I hope to compete in 2024 [in Paris] and then just listen to my body and see what I'm feeling. But the draw of competing at a home-soil Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 is pretty strong. I can't say no to that."