The US 800m star is on the comeback trail, writes Elliott Denman, and about to hit the track for her first competition in 12 months

“It’s been crazy,” Ajee’ Wilson tells you, by way of telephone interview.

Which isn’t exactly late-breaking news.

Then again, when you are the No.1-ranked athlete in the world in a prime event on the programme of the “flagship sport of the Olympic Games,” a very good guess is that the last year has been a whole lot crazier for you than it’s been for so many of your contemporaries.

At 26 – she’ll be 27 on May 8 – the stellar speedster from Neptune, New Jersey, a Temple University graduate who now lives and trains in Philadelphia, is already the owner of 11 USA Track and Field national championship gold medals, holds both versions of the American record for 800m (1:55.61 outdoors, 1:58.29 indoors) and is a young veteran of both the 2016 Olympics and multiple editions of the world championships, And, too, she ran off with the top spot in the most recent complete edition of the Diamond League circuit in 2019.

That’s already a career dossier that puts her right up there with the best of the best in American track annals.

Nevertheless, she hasn’t competed in nearly a year and can’t really tell you “where I am” heading into the New Balance Grand Prix at Staten Island’s Ocean Breeze complex, on Saturday February 13. Her 2021 debut will thus be more than interesting as the track and field world catch up on her exploits and she catches up with her own sport.

Her most recent competitive outing was at the USATF Indoor Nationals in February last year in Albuquerque. Of course, she won it, in 2:01.98 and at altitude. It came a week after she’d won at New York’s Millrose Games, in an American record of 1:58.29, which held up as No.2 world time of the indoor season behind Jemma Reekie’s 1:57.9.

She’d opened her 2020 season with a 2:02.37 win in January at the New York Armory’s Dr Sander Invitational. But before that, her last prior major outing was third place at the World Championships in Doha in September 2019.

So that adds up to just three major competitions in a year and just four in nearly 16 months. What can the track and field world expect?

Wilson can’t really tell you – other than saying: “I’m pretty healthy, I’ve been training well, not bad at all (with her training group partners and coach Derek Thompson, almost always outdoors in Philadelphia, no matter the weather).

“I don’t have any issues, no nicks, no nacks.”

Yes, there were “some nicks, some nacks” for a brief stretch last summer but they’re long gone now and she’s more than anxious to get back into real racing.

She’s grateful, too, that, even through this brutal stretch of overlapping universal economic slowdown, and the devastations of the pandemic, her sponsor adidas has stayed with her and lent the ongoing support appropriate to a world-class athlete.

After the Staten Island start, she hopes to run The Texas Qualifer, a brand new outdoor meet in the Austin area on February 26-27 designed to help Tokyo Olympic hopefuls post qualifying marks. Focusing on events from the 800m up to 10,000m for men and women, the meet will be USATF-sanctioned, spectator-free and fully observant of Covid protocols.

“Hopefully” – a word almost all the global elite uses regularly these challenging days – the meet will evolve into a major stepping stone on the way to Japan in July.

Like every global Games candidate, she has no firm idea if the Tokyo Olympics will actually transpire as scheduled. And if so, in what form? As a strictly-for-TV extravaganza? As a spectator-free production? In a who-knows-what format?

“I’m just hopeful,” said Wilson. “Whatever they decide, that’s fine with me.”

She adds: “It’s obviously a bigger call than any of us can make.”

With emphasis on that single word – “obviously.”

Rio 2016 wasn’t what she’d hoped it would be. After running a sterling second place in that March’s World Indoor Championships, that wasn’t “the real Ajee” her fans saw bowing out in the semi-finals of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad six months later in Brazil.

But the 2019 outdoor campaign saw Wilson rising to the top of the world elite – with firsts in Kingston, Jamaica (1:59.22) and USA Nationals in Des Moines (1:57.72), the Herculis Monaco meet (1:57.73) as well as the Diamond League finale in Brussels (a strategic 2:00.24).

All this as 2012-16 Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya was seeing her own hopes of a “three-peat” at the two-lap distance ruled out by a Swiss court, which determined that the South African athlete had naturally elevated testosterone levels which created unfair physical advantages.

The World Championships 800m final in Doha 2019 didn’t go to plan. As the official IAAF report told it: “From the gun, Wilson ran with purpose to take the lead at the break and control the race…

“Through the final turn, (Uganda’s Halimah) Nakaayi worked her way up to Wilson’s shoulder, shadowed by (Uganda team-mate Winnie) Nanyondo.

“The diminutive Nakaayi executed the classic pass off the turn. Wilson had no answer.

“(US team-mate Raevyn) Rogers was sprinting down lane four, passing Nanyondo, passing Wilson, and getting to within a meter of Nakaayi before the finish.”

“Very disappointing,” third-placer Wilson admitted afterward. “But a lesson learned, too.”

Yes, there’s always somebody coming up on you in this sport. There are never givens. Press clippings get you nowhere.

But always to be remembered, every starting gun answered represents a whole new chapter. It’s no wonder Ajee’ Wilson’s can’t wait for February 13 to roll around.