Jager completes injury comeback, makes World Championship team

Evan Jager runs 8:17.29 to achieve the World Championship steeplechase standard, finishes second to earn his spot on the world championship team. Photo by Logan Hannigan-Downs

By Joe Zochert

Bowerman Track Club’s Evan Jager crossed the finish line of the men’s 3,000m steeplechase in second place with a season-best 8:17.29 and also hit the qualifying standard to represent the U.S. at his fifth World Athletics Championships in July.

Despite placing second on Saturday afternoon, the smile on the 33-year-old’s face over the last 50m of the race could be seen as he finished. 

“I couldn't even really keep it together till the finish line and just like the emotions came just pouring out of me,” Jager said.

He even compared some of these emotions to the ones that he felt in his biggest Olympic moments.

“Honestly, kind of very similar emotions to making my first Olympic team or winning the medal in Rio,” he said after the race.

Even with these emotions, the American steeplechase record holder has had his confidence shaken by a myriad of injuries.

“For me, it was just really emotional,” said Jager. “I've doubted myself, more than I believed in myself these last four years.”

Injuries have derailed him the past four years, forcing him to miss the 2019 World Championships and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

In 2018, he suffered a stress fracture that ended his season and caused him to sit out 2019. He recovered in 2020, but the season was canceled due to the pandemic. 

To begin the 2021 season, he sustained a calf injury in March which had him walking in a boot at the time of last year’s Olympic Trials. 

Despite these injuries, the former Wisconsin Badger felt relief in making the team this year.

“The decision to end the season at that point was kind of a relief because like I could finally like allow myself to relax and accept the fact that I was injured and then start looking forward to this year,” said Jager. “Obviously, everyone in the U.S. wants to make the World Championship team in Eugene so that was a huge goal for me.”

With another season ending due to injury, he decided to use that time to help his body to fully heal. 

“I took a ton of just downtime. I didn't cross train, I didn't do anything because I just wanted my body to heal,” he said about his time last year.

With these injuries and time off, Jager has had to reinvent his running style and depend on strategy.

“I don't really feel like I can run 66 and drop like a 62 whenever I want,” said Jager. “So I feel like I have to kind of spread my energy out a little bit better and just be smarter about when I'm making moves and positioning.”

Fighting through these injuries and implementing these new strategies, Jager is beginning to feel like his old self again over the past couple of weeks.

“I'm starting to feel more and more like myself,” he said. “I feel like I've been in a workout and like I could tell the workout was getting hard but I know can keep pushing,”

“I feel like I'm actually fit enough to like keep improving on fitness in those really hard workouts.”

With these difficult four years, Jager  didn’t throw in the towel as he believes this is the first major challenge of his legendary steeple career.

Until 2012, Jager competed in the 1500m and 5,000m. After making the Olympic team for the steeplechase in 2012, he felt that the steeple has been his event. He didn’t face many major challenges until the stress fracture.

“I was like [steeplechase] feels just right to me and so from then until 2018, I never really ran into any major challenges in my career in the steeple,” said Jager. “I thought a lot of times that like I don't think I could live with myself if I like just gave up the first time it got hard.” 

“I mainly wanted to prove to myself that I could do it but like there was that little bit in me that like wanted to prove to everyone else that like I wasn't done and I can still be the runner that they thought I could be.”

With the hardest stretch of his 13-year career hopefully behind him, Jager will be back at Hayward for the world championships with hopes to finish the season healthy and build on it.

“I'm excited to keep progressing throughout the summer and hopefully, finish the season healthy and have a full two years of training under my belt going into the next season,” said Jager. “So if I can get here and make the team off of like six months of solid training. I'm very excited looking forward.”