Here what Olympians should take note from Mike Conley's 1988 Olympics race

Mike Conley spent most of the 1980s ranked among the top triple jumpers in the world. So, heading into the U.S. Olympic trials in '88, there was very little thought given to the idea he wouldn't finish in the top three and make the trip to Seoul.

In a sport embedded inside an Olympic world where gold medals can be won and careers can be made by the most minuscule of fractions of seconds or inches or centimeters what toppled Conley's hopes had nothing to do with a measuring tape.

It was a pair of baggy shorts, the likes of which he had never worn in a track meet before, that did him in. Conley recalls video replays that showed the breeze that was kicked up by the vented flaps on the sides of his shorts created a barely perceptible mark in the sand nearly a foot behind where he landed.

 

Officials measured Conley's jump from the mark the shorts made. It cost him precious centimeters and he finished fourth, one spot out of the Olympics.

Devastating, the now-61-year-old dad of Timberwolves guard Mike Conley Jr. called it. I wasn't jumping bad. I was in a good place then. I made all the right physical decisions. But I made some dumb mental mistakes.

Conley's story serves as one of hundreds of examples of how the most minute details can change not only the result of a single race or contest, but also can have a huge impact on the lives of athletes.

Over 17 days in Paris this summer, fractions often gained or lost due to the smallest of details that often only the athletes and their coaches might notice will make the difference between first, second, third or no medal at all.

Conley's tale had a storybook ending. Motivated by the freak failure, to say nothing of the silver medal at the 1984 Games where he went in as the favorite, he came back in 1992 and won Olympic gold in Barcelona.

Rower Michelle Sechser finished fifth with Molly Reckford at the Tokyo Games in 2021 in a race in which the top five spots were squeezed less than one second apart. Sechser says she uses that agonizing loss as fuel for a return Olympic trip this year.

I visualize that moment, she said. Even saying it now chokes me up to think about what that podium moment would be like. And it's enough to carry me through.

Most Olympic athletes know what they're signing up for when they commit to a life where their sport is in the spotlight once every four years.

Says long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall, who heads into the Olympics undefeated in seven meets this year: I'm a goal-oriented person, which is cool, but at the same time, it's almost kind of degrading for us. Where it's, like, one centimeter. Like, what could I have done to get that one centimeter? It could've been eating right, it could've been sleeping right, it could've been nothing. I don't know.

Two of the biggest races of 100-meter sprinter Justin Gatlin's life were decided by .01 seconds one one-hundredth of a second.

The American sprinter's colorful, sometimes controversial career took off in 2004 before Usain Bolt was a household name thanks to a .01-second victory over Portugal's Francis Obikwelu at the Athens Olympics.

In replays of the race, you can see Gatlin pumping his fists in perfect form, before he begins a lean forward in the final steps his chest breaking the plane of the finish line in Lane 3 just that split second before Obikwelu crosses in Lane 5. Gatlin ran the 100 meters in 9.85 seconds.

For me, it was a lifechanging event, said Gatlin, now 42, who estimated that gold medal earned him multiple millions of dollars more than had he finished second. As you train and prepare and strategize, you have to make sure you are realizing that these hundredths of a second, something that's quicker than a snap of a finger, can really change the trajectory of your career and your legacy, as well.

More than a decade later, in 2015, Gatlin was closer to the end of his career and Bolt was a six-time Olympic gold medalist when they met at world championships in a race that would dictate the conversation leading into the next year's Olympics.

Gatlin had strung together a series of sub-9.8 100s heading into the championships at the Bird's Nest in Beijing. Bolt had been ailing with injuries. Gatlin, maybe for the first time since Bolt burst onto the scene, felt like he was a favorite.

Gatlin led halfway through that race. (That wasn't so unusual against Bolt, who was a slow starter.) But with the finish line about 20 meters away, the American's strides became uneven. He started leaning forward, and by the time he reached the finish line, he was off-balance, his arms were flailing, while Bolt was still in perfect form, bursting across the finish line. The result: Bolt 9.79 seconds, Gatlin 9.80.

Gatlin cried in the car all the way back to his hotel, certain he gave it away.

But Gatlin closed out his career on a high note. Two years after that heartbreaking loss to Bolt at world championships, which led to a .08-second loss at the Rio Olympics, Gatlin pulled an upset in what turned out to be Bolt's final 100-meter race at worlds in London.

In all, Gatlin finished first or second in seven 100-meter races at worlds and Olympics between 2004 and 2019. The cumulative margin between first and second in all those races: .1 seconds one-tenth of one second.