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Posted: 2024-06-25 03:35:27

It was a classic case of going from the outhouse to the penthouse.

Less than an hour before her semifinal at US track trials, 400-metre runner Kendall Ellis was trapped in a portaloo, banging on the door, screaming for someone to let her out in scenes reminiscent of Robbie Williams's famous music video for his 1999 song, Supreme.

Thankfully, somebody did.

She won that race in a personal-best time, then came back on Sunday to top that mark and win the final, along with the national championship and the spot in the Olympics that comes with it.

"Crazy things happen right before something great is about to occur, so maybe I needed that to get all the nerves and adrenaline out," she said.

Nobody saw that coming.

Nobody could have seen this performance coming, either.

Kendall Ellis runs on a track

Kendall Ellis beat her personal best to qualify for the Games.(Getty Images: Patrick Smith)

Ellis's time of 49.81 seconds in the semifinal on Saturday marked her first personal best in six years. In the final, she bettered that by 0.35.

Now, the 28-year-old who was considered mainly a relay specialist will go to the Olympics to compete for a title all her own.

"Just believing in myself," she said when asked what sparked this sudden resurgence.

"The workouts haven't changed, the results in practice haven't changed, but finally something clicked up here that said, 'You can do it. You can go out with the best of them and you can finish better than anyone else."

Funny thing is, for the past six years, she's had the video to prove it.

Even today, if you type some combination of the words "greatest" "track" and "comebacks" into the browser, Ellis's video from the 2018 NCAA championships will come up somewhere high on the first screen.

In that race, Ellis made up 30 metres over the home stretch to lead Southern California to a win in the 4x400 relay.

Halfway through the last lap of that 2018 relay, she was in third place, barely on the screen.

Kendall Ellis looks to one side

Kendall Ellis may have had cause to be anxious ahead of her semifinal — but she pulled out the performance anyway.(AP Photo: Charlie Neibergall)

A few seconds later, the TV announcer all but handed the race to the Purdue runner in the lead: "There's no way, unless they drop the baton, Purdue's going to lose this, which we certainly didn't see."

Ellis had a couple of things going for her. She knew the Purdue runner was a middle-distance specialist without the same closing kick as she had.

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