Hurdler Celeste Mucci’s 70,000km trip to make 2024 Paris Olympic Games

Injury could have forced hurdler Celeste Mucci to give up on her Olympic dream. Instead, she travelled the globe in a personal odyssey that will end down the straight at Stade de France.

Celeste Mucci traveled tens of thousands of kilometres to qualify for the Olympics. Picture: David Caird

Hurdler Celeste Mucci navigated the globe in pursuit of a place in Paris. Over the course of a month, she zig-zagged between countries and racked up more than 70,000 kilometres as she chased down the rankings points needed to secure her place in the Australian track and field team.

Her personal odyssey included races in Eisenstadt and Austria. She jetted from Poland to Melbourne to Suva and back to Poland again. She squeezed in meets in Edmonton and Vancouver.

A year that began with a torn hamstring will end down the straight in Paris because Mucci refused to concede defeat when all hope looked lost.

“I ruptured (my hamstring) in late January - Australia Day weekend,” said Mucci, who will begin heats alongside Michelle Jenneke and Liz Clay on Wednesday night (AEST).

“It was my second competition back for the season. I got back to Melbourne, got scans. It was grade three (tear) plus tendon, so I had to go in for surgery.

Celeste Mucci’s scar from her hamstring surgery is a constant reminder of what she’s gone through to get to Paris. Picture: David Caird

“I got into surgery the first week of February. From then on… it was basically a three-month recovery. I think it was like it was like five, six weeks in, it got infected.

“I think I had gotten into the pool too quickly. I was too eager to do all that rehab and the wound - just because the scar was quite big - it just hadn’t had enough time to properly close up.

“It got infected. That was a little bit of a setback, right? So, if there’s just going to be all these little setbacks on the way, then it’s looking pretty slim, to be honest.

“But after we managed that …. it was tough from there. Definitely the last like month of racing is the most I have ever raced.

“So everything had to go right. I was literally all around the world trying to get my ranking points back up and into the … qualifying, which somehow I managed.”

Celeste Mucci (second from left) goes through her paces in France. Picture: Michael Klein

Mucci now wears the scar that runs down her hamstring as a badge of honour. She was hurtling down the track in Canberra, her season only just starting, when she felt a pop and dropped like a stone.

Her initial thought was a minor hamstring tear. Maybe a few weeks rest and back to business. Her partner, GWS player Jack Buckley, suspected otherwise but kept his thoughts to himself.

“So I had never had really any major hamstring issues prior,” Mucci said.

“But I definitely felt like a pop and then my muscle just kind of dropped. I just went down like I’d been shot.

“It was kind of weird feeling. I didn’t realise how bad it was until I got back home and got the scans. I was in my head, thinking, oh, it’s probably just a grade two.

“I had no comparison. It’s funny, my my partner, Jack Buckley plays for the Giants. Yeah, he won’t say anything, but he had seen a lot of hamstrings, and he was like, ‘oh, maybe just wait for the scans’.

“They came back with, like, a grade three. Like, you could barely walk. And I was like, ‘oh, God, he just didn’t want to tell me.”

Mucci didn’t waste time feeling sorry for herself. She couldn’t afford to. She ripped into her rehab, made it back in time to run the heats at the Australian track and field championships in April and then stepped things up once May arrived.

Armed with a spreadsheet to track her progress, her first port of call was Eisenstaedt, Austria. Then she headed to Goznow, Poland. She returned to Melbourne for a short stop before jetting out for the Oceania championships in Fiji.

Then it was back to Canada for meets in Edmonton and Vancouver. She finished with two meets in Poland. All told, she was away a month and finished up scraping into the Olympic qualifying by four spots, securing her an Olympic berth in the 100m hurdles alongside Michelle Jenneke and Liz Clay in the 100m hurdles.

“We had a spreadsheet out and it was like if this girl runs this, you could move here,” Mucci said.

“It was crazy and there was so many competitions in the last week. We were just looking at all the outcomes, but yeah, it was good outcome in the end.

“It was hard but the hamstring held up quite well. So I guess now it’s a lot stronger, which is always a bonus coming out of these things because you want to be stronger.

“So there was definitely some points early on that I thought, oh, this is like, actually quite a big recovery.”

Mucci could have stayed in Europe and waited until Paris but after her hectic schedule, she was desperate to spend some quality time at home before the Olympics.

The day is now fast arriving and after what she has been through this year, she isn’t willing to look too far ahead.

“Now I just I obviously am back in form, so I would love to do a personal best,” she said.

“The goal is always to get out of the heat. In the Olympics, you know, it’s, it’s very tough track. But yeah, to get into the semi would be amazing.

“And then and then it’s hurdles. Anything can really happen from there.”