What's next for star US heptathlete Annie Kunz after missing the Olympics?

The summer of 2024 has gone a little bit differently than American heptathlete star Annie Kunz would have liked.

Kunz had her sights set on Paris 2024, where she hoped to improve on her sixth place finish in Tokyo, but she was unable to qualify at the US Olympic trials due to injury, per Times of San Diego.

"I’m not sure what’s next for me. Right now I’m just focused on healing physically and emotionally," Kunz reflected on social media.

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Kunz posted an encouraging update on social media at the end of July 2024. She wrote, "no running or plyos for awhile, but I'm so happy my foot is able to handle some dumbbell workouts in the meantime to keep me sane!"

Annie Kunz is one of the USA's top heptathletes, having represented her country in multiple events at the highest level. Let's get to know her story a bit better.

According to USA Track & Field, Kunz was born on February 16, 1993, in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. As a teenager, she focused on track and field, but was also successful in another sport.

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She also played volleyball and soccer in high school, and was even selected for the U.S. U-17 Women's National Team in 2010, per Texas A&M Athletics. However, she would shift her focus towards track and field, and more specifically heptathlon.

In 2016, Kunz competed in the US Olympic trials, but failed to qualify for Rio, finishing eighth. However, she never gave up on her Olympic goal and continued to work hard to fulfil her dreams as an athlete.

Kunz consistently outdid herself and achieved better results along the way. In 2018, she was fourth at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, a result she repeated the following year, per World Athletics.

In 2019, she also represented the United States at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, where she won a silver medal and kept making a name for herself.

Her Pan-American success was the build-up to national triumphs: in 2020, Kunz crowned herself the USA Indoor Track and Field Champion, her first national title.

His next big goal was the Tokyo Olympics, for which she qualified by winning the US Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, with an impressive score of 6703 points, a personal record.

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"I never in a million years thought I could score what I scored tonight," Kunz was pleased with her performance, per Track & Field News. "Hard work pays off. It really does."

Kunz travelled to Tokyo with high ambitions, and they proved to be well-founded. She finished sixth in the heptathlon and proved once again that she deserved to be at the top.

"I didn't have the meet I wanted to have, but I think it might have been the proudest meet I've ever had. I almost fell four seconds in during the hurdles, so to bounce back felt great," she told TexAgs in late 2021.

Kunz's sporting talent may not come as a complete surprise, as she is the daughter of Terry Kunz, who won the Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders in 1976.

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