Hawkins showed the grit of a champion, finishing her event following a zero-score high jump

The Paris Olympics did not yield the results Chari Hawkins was hoping for, but she has every reason to be proud of her performance.

The 33-year-old Rexburg native and Madison High School alum set a personal-best combined score of 6,456 points at the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Team Trials in June. The score was good enough to earn a second-place finish, between winner Anna Hall and third-place finisher Taliyah Brooks, and an Olympics roster spot.

That alone cemented her position among the world’s elite heptathlon athletes.

Sure, she no doubt wanted to make a run at an Olympic medal. But what she did was arguably just as difficult.

After the first event Thursday morning — the 100-meter hurdles — Hawkins was in fifth place, out of 21 competitors. Her time of 13.16 seconds was not far off her personal best of of 12.95 seconds, set earlier this year, earning her 1,100 points.

The second event, high jump, is where things went completely sideways for the former Utah State Aggie.

Hawkins’ personal best in the event of 1.85 meters — set in 2022 — would have been worth 1,072 points and had her in third place after two events. Her season best of 1.79 meters was set during the trials and would have earned her 1,013 points, good enough to stay in fifth.

Even if she had cleared only the initial height of 1.71 meters, Hawkins would have gone into the third event — shot put — with 1,967 points — in 12th place.

Unfortunately, she failed in her three tries at that first height, leading to the first emotional moment caught on camera during the Olympic day. Shortly after “no-heighting,” USA Network cameras caught Hawkins talking with USA heptathlete coach Shelia Burrell.

Even the worst lip-readers could see what she was saying: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” Then, Hawkins turned away from her coach and collapsed to the ground. That was when the cameras mercifully cut away from the distressed athlete.

The USA Network commentary team discussed Hawkins’ options going forward after the zero-score event, suggesting that she may want to drop out of the event, with no realistic route out of the bottom of the standings.

As any athlete will tell you, the best way to get over a mistake is to erase it from your memory and move on to the next attempt as soon as possible.

Alas, that was not an option for Hawkins.

Instead, she had to wait for the other 20 competitors to finish their high jump. Then, the midday break forced her to stew on her error for another seven hours.

She returned to Stade de France, having dropped from fifth- to 21st-place, and got right back to business.

Hawkins carded a 770-point shot put of 13.64 meters. Then, with a heart likely as heavy as her legs, ran a 24.49-second 200-meter race, worth 934 points.

With a score somewhere between her season high of 1,013 and the 867 she would have earned for clearing the initial 1.71 meters, Hawkins would have ended day one of the two-day event in the middle of the pack. Maybe not in the thick of the medal race, but nowhere near the bottom of the leaderboard.

Hawkins showed the grit it took to win the 2022 National Indoor Pentathlon Short Track Championship. She once again returned to the stadium Friday morning and continued chipping into her deficit.

After two events — including the high jump — Hawkins was 774 points behind France’s Auriana Lazraq-Khlass for 20th out of 21 competitors. There were initially 22 competitors, but Germany’s Sophie Weissenberg was injured during warmups for the hurdles and dropped out. Netherlands’ Anouk Vetter also dropped out after injuring herself in the long jump, the first event Friday.

Hawkins scored 819 points, with a jump of 5.90 meters, and 750 points, with a javelin throw of 44.30 meters. Her scores were 14th- and 15-best in the field, respectively. She finished with a 800-meter time of 2:15.76, 17th in the field.

When all was said and done, Hawkins finished just 593 points behind Australia’s Tori West for 20th — she had made up nearly 200 points on the group ahead of her over the last five events.

Belgium’s Nafissatou Thiam won the gold medal, with a final score of 6,880. Katarina Johnson-Thompson (6,844), of Great Britain, and Noor Vidts (6,707), also from Belgium, rounded out the podium.

U.S. champion Anna Hall, from Colorado, finished with 6,615 and a fifth-place finish, while Arkansas’ Taliyah Brooks finished 11th with a combined score of 6,258.

Had Hawkins cleared the 1.71-meter initial height — and changed nothing else about the meet — she would have finished in 16th place, with a score of 6,122.

Matching her season-best height of 1.79 meters would have given her a 6,268 and 11th-place finish, while personal best-matching height of 1.85 meters would have earned Hawkins a scored of 6,327 and a 10th-place finish.

Of course, “changed nothing else about the meet” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this hypothetical.

Sports competitions, like life, operate on the Butterfly Effect Theory — in which a small change can greatly effect the overall outcome.

Perhaps a successful high jump carries Hawkins to improved results in the following events. Or, maybe being in the medal race after two events — or at the end of the first day — create unmanageable pressure and a later collapse.

We will never know.

What we do know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that Hawkins, this season, was the second-best American female to compete in the heptathlon — that was decided at the U.S. Trials. And she is among the 23 best women in the world at the seven-event sport.

She also showed more competitive tenacity than most would muster on the sporting world’s grandest stage, by taking a catastrophic mistake on the chin, tightening her cleats and fighting to the final gun of the 800-meter race.

She is an inspiration to anyone with aspirations of competing in any sport, and should be celebrated by all of eastern Idaho.

Thank you, Chari Hawkins, for epitomizing what it means to be an Olympic athlete.