Secret Agency

Photo of Elle St. Pierre winning the Wanamaker Mile by Joe Hale

Words Jeff M

For last week’s Every-So-Weekly, I made the comparison of Josh Kerr return to his home country of Scotland to compete in the World Indoor Championships to James Bond’s return to his family home in Scotland in Sam Mendes’s 2012 action film Skyfall.

I had to muscle this comparison a bit (as Bond likes to do) because Bond’s return to his childhood home- the Skyfall manor, was a last resort to escape a crazed ex secret agent who was wronged by their boss, whom he calls mother. Bond’s retreat is ultimately to set a trap for disgraced former agent Silva who has come after him, but it also allows him to find himself in the process. All of this happening amidst backlash aimed at the 00 program due to Bond’s own bungling of missions- something his superiors pin on his age. In a fast-paced, digital world, Bond had to go home to face his demons, rediscover himself and block out the noise of the outside world forcing its fabricated narratives on him.

Josh Kerr is in his prime. He won gold in the World Championship 1500m last year and set the indoor 2-mile world record at the Millrose Games just a few weeks ago. His initial reason for not wanting to go home to Scotland to compete in the World Indoor Championships was that he did not want to jeopardize his build toward the Olympic Games in Paris later this Summer. Not going home had everything to do with keeping focus, not regaining focus.

At the beginning of Skyfall, Bond is shot and wounded in a friendly fire incident while in hot pursuit of a bad guy. He falls from a moving train and into a ravine and is presumed dead. He slinks off to a Turkish beach to take shots with a scorpion on his shot glass hand in secrecy as the world moves on without him. When he returns, he has been replaced.

In 2021, Elle St. Pierre was on top of the American running world. She won the Olympic Trials and made the Olympic Final. In 2022, she surprised with a silver medal in the 3000m at the World Indoor Championships in 8:42 but didn’t dominate the US scene quite like the previous year. She made another World Championship team but placed third at US Outdoor Champs to do it and then failed to make the World Championships Final. In 2023, she announced that she was pregnant and would not compete.

Pregnancy is not taking a bullet in the line of duty and absconding to a Turkish beach bar (new moms don’t get the vacation after the incredibly traumatic and awesome event) but in the United States, maternity leave is classified as a short-term disability- a ridiculous description that needs to be changed yesterday.

In the fast-paced, digitally communicated world of Track media, 9 months plus recovery time post-partum is an eternity. There is a new standard every week and a new story every minute. Track, like most everything these days is increasingly a “what have you done lately?” field, and we don’t quite know how to comprehend pregnancy’s place within it, so there is a congratulations post and then largely silence on the subject. Through a track lens, no one really knows how someone will return after giving birth, so the airwaves are filled with different performances from other stars and the news cycle keeps spinning.

10 months after the birth of her son, Elle St. Pierre returned to the track. She first raced the 3000m at the New Balance Boston Indoor games. She placed a narrow second to Australia’s Jess Hull, running 8:25, the second fastest time ever by an American in the process. Because this was a second-place performance, it likely did not get the hype it deserved.

The following week, St. Pierre toed the line in New York City for the famed Wanamaker Mile at the Millrose Games. Once again, she was matched up against Hull. She trailed Hull through the middle laps of the 8-lap race, but this time, made a move with 200m to go. She immediately got a gap and showed no signs of relenting. She crossed the finish line, breaking her own American Record of 4:16.85 that she set in 2020 with a time of 4:16.41. Since this was a superior mark in her primary event and the second great performance in 2 weeks, it was a signifier that she was ‘back’- back to her place atop United States middle distance running and regional dominance.

After safely winning the US 3000m title in Albuquerque to secure her spot on the World’s team, she boarded a plane to Glasgow to compete against the best in the world.

The 3000m final got out to a fast start. It might have been influenced by the event being a straight final this year, with no preliminary rounds. Steeplechase and Cross-Country World Champion, Beatrice Chepkoech led until just after 1000m when Gudaf Tsegay took over and led a small group including St. Pierre and Jess Hull through 1600m in 4:29. Tsegay, the world record holder in the 5000m and indoor 1500m and three-time world champion continued to lead and press the pace. Within the final lap, Tsegay continued to push. At the speed she was running, and given her credentials, she might have been slightly confused as to why she had to continue to push as hard as she was, but into the final 50m straight, Elle St. Pierre pulled even with the woman who holds world records in distances on either side, as well as the second fastest time ever in the event being run, and in the final meters, overtook the heavy favorite to win gold. St. Pierre closed her final 200m in under 30 seconds and finished in 8:20.87, a championship record, a new American record by nearly 5 seconds and the third fastest indoor 3000m ever run. Her performance by any calculation is up there with the greatest races ever run by an American distance runner. And she did it less than a year after giving birth.

She came to Scotland from her dairy farm in Vermont to do the unthinkable, driving home that it does not matter what anyone else says or who is controlling airwaves at the moment, what matters is what you do and that you do it on your own time, being true to yourself.

In her interview after her Wanamaker Mile victory, St. Pierre said: “I did that for all the moms out there who don’t feel like themselves. You just gotta come back stronger, you’ve got it in you.”

Fast Women shared in an Instagram story last week, for every story of success post pregnancy there is one of struggle.

Standing next to my wife when she gave birth to our daughter, it was the most terrifying and awesome thing that I’ve ever seen. As hard as I could try, I’ll never do anything that hardcore in my life. I couldn’t believe that in our padded up and guard railed society, there is still a place where you walk into a room and they say: “we’re going to try to do this very messy and difficult thing and although we hope it turns out ok, we can’t make any promises” and then women just buckle down and make it happen, and it happens all the frickin time. We don’t celebrate it enough.

If men could give birth, it would be the final film in the James Bond series and then he and his scorpions would head to a swim up bar somewhere to take shots and live happily ever after, but Elle Pt. Pierre won 3k gold during the closing credits.

It may appear as if the world has moved on, or that the circulating narratives that don’t include you are the reality, but if you have belief, you have agency. Thanks for this week’s years of inspiration packed into 8 minutes and 20 seconds, Elle St. Pierre. We’ll sit with this story for a while.

The Skyfall comparison does not fit this story either, but it’s a great movie. Give it a watch.