When the beautiful gets ugly: Women's 3000m at USATF Indoor

This weekend was the USATF Indoor USA Championships in Albuquerque, NM. The top 2 finishers in each race get to go Sopot, Poland for the World Indoor Championships. In a year without Olympics or an outdoor World Championships, this is one of the biggest track races of the year. So, naturally, there has been a lot of pressure on the elite athletes here to make that team, and I was very much looking forward to watching their journeys to Poland.
That feeling of excitement changed after the women's 3,000m race. An indoor track race means often 2 laps for each lap that would be done outdoors. There tends to be a lot of jostling, as everyone is fighting for positions. In the final lap, Gabrielle (Gabe) Grunewald made contact with eventual 3rd place finisher Jordan Hasay, and then went on to victory.

There was a lot of back and forth as to whether the contact impeded Hasay's stride, and eventually Gabe G was disqualified and lost her first national title and well-deserved ticket to the Championships. Alberto Salazar, the heralded coach and dominant American runner of the early 80s, lost his temper in a screaming match with another coach during all of this. After much back and forth (this story blew up all of the running and track and field websites), Gabe was finally reinstated on Monday as the champion. It was only because Jordan Hasay withdrew her protest (whether it was on her own choice, or that of her coach and Nike, that is still unclear): the decision was not overturned.

Screaming, yelling, threats...this makes our sport look ugly. The NFL has bullies and MLB has doping scandals (track does too), but on a weekend when the country's best should be celebrated for their hard work over the long winter, an ugly storm brewed instead.
It's not my place to discuss interference or clipping - I am not a USATF referee or official - I have no idea how that works. All I know is that it made for a stain on what should have been a banner of a weekend for our sport.

In protest or show of solidarity, the 1500m women runners walked off of the field after their race, hand in hand. They were not engaged in a shouting match against the officials, but united in a peaceful manner to show their support for the runners. 

I don't think the resolution ultimately meant that there is a solution to some of the larger issues that boiled over. But I know this:
The last time someone acted with so much anger because of something in a race, this happened:

Jock Semple, in anger of having a woman in his protected, sacred race, leapt out of the official bus and attempted to physically remove runner #261, Kathrine Switer out of the race. But then she, after being attacked in the 1967 Boston Marathon, went on to advocate for the inclusion of the women's marathon in the Olympics, and ran a personal best of 2:51 in 1975.

She turned a negative into a transformative moment, not just something that changed her own life, but impacted the lives of millions of women, myself included.
I don't know how this weekend's events will impact the sport at large. I'm sure for many runners, this isn't even a story on their radar. But it was an ugly moment and some good needs to come from it. This is what runners supporting each other should look like. I hope the stain can be washed away soon.