It’s an achievement made remarkable for her youth: Cunningham is the youngest U.S. track and field athlete to reach the Olympics since 1980.
“I’m very appreciative, just to be able to go to the Olympics this year,” Cunningham said. “So I’m more thankful than disappointed. It was a relief to qualify and just know that I was top three. At the same time, I still wanted to win. I always want to win.”
The trip to Rio caps a remarkable opening act in her budding professional career, which began on March 21, one day after Cunningham took the gold medal in the high jump at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Portland.
Yet losing has its benefits — particularly when it comes with the silver lining of nonetheless punching her ticket on the U.S. team for Summer Games.
Cunningham began to tire near the end of the second day of competition, noting how her “legs lost some juice” as the event reached heights above the Olympic standard. Her father, who doubles as her coach, noticed the same; he “wants to ratchet it up” in training, Cunningham said.
“I’ll just keep working until Rio so that doesn’t happen,” she said.
Even though the Eagles have a hatred for the Giants, Phil Sheridan from ESPN.com writes that the team’s biggest division rival is the Dallas Cowboys.
The answer to this is often different for Eagles fans and Eagles players. For fans, the answer is always the Cowboys. This goes back to the 1970s, when the Eagles were dreadful and the Cowboys were strutting around as “America’s Team.” The Eagles and Cowboys duked it out for the NFC East title in 2013 and 2014, making the Cowboys a big rival for the current players as well as their fans.