Running hurdles can be a metaphor for life. It’s not whether you fall, but whether you get up. So it was for Ashley Spencer.
As a junior at Lawrence North, she fell during the 300-meter hurdles at the state meet. She got up, caught up, and finished second – at the state meet. She was disqualified for impeding another runner. A spectator came up to her afterward and told her to stop crying. “Everyone here in the stands saw what happened and will never forget what you just did,” the spectator said. Video of that race persuaded coach Tonja Buford-Bailey to recruit her to Illinois. Thus began Spencer’s pathway to an Olympic podium.
At Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Spencer became the first Indiana-born woman to win an individual medal in Olympic track and field, a bronze in the 400-meter hurdles. Coincidentally, her coach had won the same medal in the same event -- at Atlanta in 1996. And 2016 was Spencer’s first year devoted to the 400 hurdles.
At Lawrence North, Spencer’s only individual state title was in the 100-meter hurdles in 2010. She was on 4x400 relay teams that won every year, 2008-11, including a time of 3:47.37 in 2011 that broke a 28-year-old state record.
For the Illini, she concentrated on the flat 400 meters.
In 2012, she became the first freshman to be NCAA champion in the 400 since Sanya Richards in 2003. Spencer skipped the Olympic Trials and instead won the world under-20 title. Her time of 50.50 was the fastest by a 19-year-old since 2004, also by Richards, who became the American record-holder and 2012 Olympic champion.
Spencer won the NCAA 400 again in 2013 and qualified for the World Championships in Moscow, where she won a gold medal in the 4x400 relay after first-place Russia was disqualified for doping.