TOKYO — Jasmine Camacho-Quinn nabbed the gold medal in the women’s 100 meter hurdles, just the second gold medal in Puerto Rican history, clocking in at 12.37 seconds. American Keni Harrison followed with silver. Jamaica’s Megan Tapper took home the bronze.
This final was about redemption for both Camacho-Quinn and Harrison. In 2016, Camacho-Quinn was a 19-year-old University of Kentucky student coming off an NCAA championship when she came to her first Olympics.
She fell in her semifinal, her trail leg clipping the top of the eighth of the 10 hurdles, and she couldn’t regain her form before the ninth, stumbling and falling to the track.
The daughter of a father born in South Carolina and a mother born in Puerto Rico, Camacho-Quinn chose to represent her mother’s island; even though Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, the IOC recognizes it as its own country for the purposes of Olympic competition and laws.
As heartbreaking as Camacho-Quinn’s first Olympic experience was, at least she was in Rio. Harrison went into the 2016 U.S. Trials as the best hurdler in the world that season and finished fourth in the final — only the top three get to go to the Games.
The three American women who did go swept the medals, small solace to the woman who missed her chance to be part of the show. A couple of weeks after her Trials disappointment, Harrison broke the world record in the event, running 12.20 seconds at a meet in London.
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