A Scottish Runner Was Nearly Denied Her Victory Lap Because The Event Was Running Late

DailyDot- When you win a gold medal in track and field, you get to run a victory lap. Those are the rules. Those have always been the rules. But for some reason, after winning the 1,500 meter finals at the European Indoor Athletics Championships on Saturday, Scotland’s Laura Muir was prevented from participating in her celebration. Not once, not twice, not three times. A race official stood on the track and physically prevented her from basking in the glory that track and field bestows upon its winners. Apparently, the official told Muir there wasn’t enough time for her to take the victory lap.

Perhaps the official forgot that Muir runs fast for a living. And apparently, she’s quite sneaky as well, because dammit, Muir was going to take her victory lap regardless of what anybody else said.

​As for what Muir was thinking, she told reporters, via the Mirror, “I thought, ‘It’s my first medal. I’m not going to lose out on my lap of honor. I’m going.’ … I didn’t really say anything. I just thought, at the end of the day, she won’t be able to catch me.”


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You know, it's a good thing someone at that event understands how much money time is worth. Granted, the official that made a spectacle of herself by trying to block a Gold medal-winning runner from participating in an age old tradition inevitably cost herself more of it. However, she didn't know that the athlete was going to say "fuck this" and use her athleticism to take advantage of the 7 additional lanes afforded to her by a regulation size track after the third time she got reprimanded  for attempting to garner her deserved praise?  Sure, the stickler's efforts were predictably futile, but at least she had the courage to stand on the tracks while the train was trying to get it's due. If there were no one there to uphold the sanctity of the clock then the precedent that it's okay to literally run a couple minutes late would have been set by a quick celebration that could have taken less than half the amount of time without the preceding argument with an uppity clipboard carrier! She may have looked like a moron with ass backwards priorities, but at least she did what was right by her watch...even if it backfired tremendously.