In 2004, a 400 meters runner named Mary Danner finished eighth in her semifinal at the Olympic Trials in Sacramento.
It wasn’t a big story. In college, at the University of Cincinnati, she’d been a good runner, but she’d never won a league title, she’d never made it to the NCAA meet, and in 2003, her first year as a post-collegiate, she didn’t make it out of the first round in the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
