It was a bitter pill to swallow early on Wednesday morning, as Peabody native Heather MacLean came up just short in her pursuit of an Olympic medal when she failed to qualify for the women’s 1500-meter final at the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
MacLean ran a time of 4:05.33 in the second semifinal of the day, finishing 12th in her race and 21st overall. Her time was nearly three seconds slower than her qualifying run of 4:02.40 on Sunday night and was four seconds behind the time she would have needed to get into the final.
MacLean, who began on the inside lane, got off to a bit of a slow start before quickly rallying to move up into the fourth position. She bounced back and forth between fourth and fifth place alongside Diana Mezulianikova of the Czech Republic, but around the 1:30 mark MacLean started slipping behind. By the halfway point in the race, four more runners had passed her.
She made a move to the inside late in the race to try and move up, but there was simply too much ground to make up. After one final push in the final 30 seconds, MacLean crossed the finish line in 12th place.
While the 2020 Olympic run is over for MacLean, her story is far from completed. She will return to the United States and continue running as a professional for New Balance and — at only 25 years old — begin the planning process for potentially qualifying for Paris in 2024.
