As it turned out, D‘Agostino probably needed more help: She soon realized she’d hurt her ankle badly in the fall.
Grimacing, she refused to give up, though, running nearly half the race with the injury. Hamblin did what she could, hanging back with D'Agostino for a little while to return the favor and offer encouragement.
“She helped me first. I tried to help her. She was pretty bad,” Hamblin said. She eventually had to leave D'Agostino behind and was certain that the American would have to stop.
Nope.
“I didn’t even realize she was still running. When I turned around at the finish line and she’s still running, I was like, wow,” Hamblin said.
She waited for her new friend to cross the line—D'Agostino had been lapped—and they hugged.
This time, it was D'Agostino who was in tears.
As D'Agostino was about to be taken away in a wheelchair, she stretched out her right hand and the two runners gripped each other’s forearms for a few moments.
In an Olympics that has seen a few unsavory incidents—the Egyptian judoka who refused to shake hands with his Israeli opponent, the booing of a French pole vaulter by the Brazilian crowd—Hamblin and D'Agostino provided a memory that captured the Olympic spirit.
“I’m never going to forget that moment,” Hamblin said. “When someone asks me what happened in Rio in 20 years’ time, that’s my story.”
