PHOTOS provided by Trevor Bassitt. Click gallery to enlarge and view at your own pace.

Part 2 HERE

By Benji Bergstrand

After Trevor Bassitt failed to advance out of the preliminary heat in the 400m hurdles at the Paris Olympics, there were no alarm bells going off, no panic setting in. He had been there before. The 2024 season had tested and taught him. Adversity didn’t scare him. 

Trevor had experienced a hamstring injury in late March that had nagged at him through the rest of the season. “I had bounced back pretty quickly,” Bassitt said. “But it never really got back to full strength so I was kind of operating with my left leg at 85-90% the rest of the season.”

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Then, one month before the Olympic Trials, Trevor ran the slowest race of his professional career at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, OR in the same stadium where the Trials would be held. “It was supposed to be my indicator race to show that we’re ready, and it was the exact opposite. It showed how far off we were so kind of the panic alarm starts to go off, but it was something my team and I just dealt with,” Bassitt said. 

After the race Grant Holloway, who would go on to win gold in the 110m hurdles, pulled Trevor aside and gave him some timely advice. Instead of going back home to Florida to train alone Trevor should train with his team and coaches in Eugene in advance of the Trials. Due to scheduling difficulties, athletes sometimes train alone and Trevor had been training by himself between a meet in Los Angeles and the meet in Oregon and Grant felt the results spoke for themselves. He knew it would be more costly for Trevor and offered to cover the extra expense. “Grant told me ‘I want to see you be great. I know the work you’re putting in. I want to help you if that’s what it takes,’” Bassitt said. Trevor declined the financial help but decided to heed his advice. It was a crucial decision. “It saved my season,” Bassitt said. “If I stayed in Florida while the rest of the team is gone, the Olympic trials don’t go the way they did and I’m not an Olympian.”

But here he was, an Olympian with one more chance to advance to the semi-final heat in the repechage round. Trevor got out to a much better start in the repechage. He ran strong throughout and was able to cruise near the end, conserving energy for the semi-final round even as he dropped nearly three-quarters of a second from his preliminary round time. “The repechage race felt really good,” Bassitt said. “That was the kind of race I wanted to run in the first round. I felt like I was in complete control of the race pretty much from the jump.”  Trevor finished first in his heat and second overall to secure a spot in the semi-finals. 

The semi-final round would be the following day, his third race in as many days.

In the semi-final round Trevor was matched up with some familiar names from his preliminary heat. World record holder Karsten Warholm of Norway, who would go on to win silver in Paris, and Brazil’s Alison dos Santos, who would take the bronze medal, were both in his heat again.  The first two hurdlers in each of the three heats would advance to the finals and would be joined by the runners with the next two fastest times.  

Trevor was in the first semi-final heat, and it would be his best race of the Olympics as he continued to get stronger–dropping over 1/3 of a second to finish at 48.29. Unfortunately, Trevor was in the fastest heat of the round and three other hurdlers, including Warholm and de Santos, turned in faster times. 

After finishing 4th in his heat, Trevor settled in to watch the remaining heats knowing that while he hadn’t officially been eliminated, the chances of advancing were slim. “I was heartbroken,” Bassitt said. “I ran a good race but it just wasn’t fast enough. I knew that I would be a long shot to make the final. I watched the remaining heats from the “Q Room” which is basically a couple couches with cameras around for us to sit in and wait.”

Trevor was officially eliminated after the second heat when Samba Abderrahman of Quatar finished 3rd in his heat with a time of 48.20, an agonizing 9 hundredths of a second faster than Trevor’s time in the first heat. 

The results of the third heat added another ‘what if?’ to Trevor’s semi-final story. Trevor’s time was actually 5 hundredths of a second faster than the 2nd place finisher in that heat. Because the top two finishers in each heat get automatic berths in the final, this left him in the odd position of being the 8th fastest hurdler in the semi-final round but not one of the 8 hurdlers advancing to the final. 

“It's really frustrating to think about, but I just can’t put myself in that situation to begin with,” Bassitt said.  “I knew going in it was 8 qualifiers, so I can’t be the ninth qualifier and then say that I should be in the final because I shouldn’t. I knew the rules going in.”

Trevor had missed making an Olympic final by the narrowest of margins. His first Olympics were over.  “It’s just kind of something that you take on the chin, you charge it to the game and keep moving forward,” he said. 

 Moving forward seems to be Trevor’s specialty both literally and figuratively. When asked about his future goals, Trevor is reluctant to talk about the Olympics. “Track and field is too difficult of a sport to overlook or underestimate certain races,” Bassitt said. “Everything is its own year. Training by year. If I look too far towards L.A. (host city of the next Olympics) in ‘28 and I don’t take care of business in 2025 I might not make it to ‘28. So, you just take care of what’s in front of you. Obviously, L.A.’s in the back of my head, but it’s not something I think about on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.”

And though he certainly plans and expects to be competing for team U.S.A. in the Los Angeles Olympics, he has plenty of other business to attend to in the meantime. “We have three different world championship meets before the next Olympics, so I’m really just focused on getting ready to qualify for Tokyo 2025,” Bassitt said.  “It’s really just taking it a day at a time right now, putting everything I can into my lifting sessions and then putting everything I can into my track sessions.”

Trevor’s final thoughts returned to home and all of the support he has received from the Bluffton community.

“I just want to thank everyone for their support,” he said. “It means the world to me and my family… more than people could possibly know. It was just really cool, in a day and age where things are so divided and so different, to see all of Bluffton and all of the local communities rally together around me. It was a really cool thing to see and it means more than people could possibly know.”