Panguitch native advances to 5,000 meter Olympic finals

PARIS,  — Whittni Morgan’s Olympic debut was phenomenal from start to finish. She has hit her stride here in Paris.

Racing in heat two of the 5,000 meter, the BYU alum maintained a steady pace.

She stayed in the middle of the pack for most of the fifteen-minute race, and then turned it up with less than a mile left.

“I usually don’t feel that good in certain laps. Like at the end, I’m not usually like, ‘Oh, I can kick it in right here,’ so when I felt that, I was really excited,” Morgan said. “I was like, I’m going to make it.”

Morgan started to break from the pack, crossing the finish line at 15:02:14, enough to advance to the finals in sixth place.

Her dream of making it this far seemed distant after undergoing knee surgery in December.

“We kind of scratched the Olympics off the list, because she wasn’t really expecting to do it,” Mason Morgan, Whittni Morgan’s husband, said. “A lot of help from God for sure.”

Morgan’s family cheered her on in the stadium, wearing t-shirts designed by Matt and Genny Houston from Panguitch. The shirts were sold to raise money for her family to make the trip to Paris, a moment they didn’t want to miss.

Morgan moves to the finals on Monday, and we’ll all be there along the way as she continues her Olympic run.