SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY — Ruby Ray is competing to represent the United States on the world stage in race walking — only two years after she discovered the sport.
Ray, 19, is set to compete in the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for race walking on June 29 in Springfield, Oregon. Ray, who is also training in the U.S. Army Rangers Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, said she is “very grateful and very proud” to represent her country.
“The U.S. has always had such a great reputation amongst the world, especially in athletics,” Ray told Patch. “For me to compete for such an amazing and important team as Team USA is an honor.”
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Ray was attending Port Jefferson High School two years ago when her track and field team needed a race walker. She said she took up the sport to help her team.
“I became decent. Then I met Gary Westerfield, and I became a little more than decent and I started becoming an elite athlete,” she said.
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Race walking is different from running; it requires competitors to maintain contact with the ground at all times and for them to keep their lead leg straightened as the foot makes contact with the ground, according to USA Track and Field. The leg must remain straightened until it passes under the body.
Race walking combines the endurance of the long distance runner with the attention to technique of a hurdler or shot putter, according to USA Track and Field. Judges evaluate the technique of race walkers and report fouls which may lead to disqualification. All judging is done by the eye of the judge. No outside technology is used in making judging decisions.
Westerfield has coached Ray since. Ray has found success, being named an All American athlete in the Junior Olympic Championships 3,000-meter and winning Athlete of the Year in 2022 for USA Track and Field Long Island Association.
Ray said her immediate success in “such a unique sport” was surprising.
“I had never heard of it until I started getting into it,” she said. “For me to find out I was good at something unique was incredible for me, and it was a shock.”
While Ray will compete in the Olympic Trials, Westerfield said his pupil racing in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris likely won’t happen, but with dedicated training over the next four years, the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles is a more achievable goal.
If Ray makes the top 5 in the 2024 trials, she would make the U.S. National Team. If she finishes in the top 3, she would get a spot on the Olympic team, but she would likely not have met the standards to go to Paris.
“So they will give her a uniform and say, ‘Congratulations, but you can’t race,'” Westerfield said.
Ray would need to walk about 15 minutes faster than she has already walked in order to reach the world standard, which Westerfield said has become “very, very difficult.”
“She’s got her work cut out for her over the next four years,” Westerfield said with an eye toward 2028.
Westerfield said it would be “incredible” if Ray beats her personal best by 15 minutes and heads to the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
“If she does that, I will crawl to the next competition if I have to,” he said. “I’ll crawl to Paris. I’m a realist, and I have enough experience to set goals that they can achieve right now.”
Making the U.S. National Team is “within the realm of good possibility,” Westerfield said, adding that he thinks Ray will make the team.
Westerfield has been coaching race walking for almost 50 years after competing in the sport when he was younger.
“Gary, he’s very traditional and at the same time, he is also very unique in that his approach is taking both a little from his experience since he was such a great race walker,” Ray said. “He did many races like the 50-kilometer. Looking up to him as a great athlete has inspired me and his strategies have influenced me in my training.”
Westerfield said he is “very proud” of Ray but also “incredibly surprised.”
“When she came to me this past January after spending five months at St. John’s University doing the Rambo training — the Army ROTC Ranger training — and very little race walking, she had come back to practice, which I have on Thursday nights, an open practice,” Westerfield said.
He teaches high school students techniques, similar to what he did with Ray. Ray returned and told him that she wanted to start walking again. She was entered in a one-mile race.
“With no training, she ended up walking much faster than she ever did in high school,” Westerfield said. “I have to attribute it to her Army Ranger training, where if she’s given a task to do, she says, ‘I’m going to do it.’ If it’s a physical competition, it doesn’t matter if it’s men or women, she says, ‘I’m going to win it.’ They can be running three or four miles, they can be hiking with a rucksack for 20 miles, and she’s going to come in first. She’s got this goal of being an Army Ranger. I spoke with her parents. If she becomes an Army Ranger, you’re not going to see her for six months. She’s going to be somewhere hiding in a ditch like Rambo. Her mother laughs about it and Ruby laughs about it. It’s all part of her determination.”
Ray was leading the one-mile race with 50 meters to go before she was passed by a competitor who’s had more speed training than Ray on the final straightaway, Westerfield said.
Ray told her coach she wanted to make the Olympic team, which would require her to walk 20 kilometers, Westerfield said. Ray had never done that. She trained for it and went to a trial race in California where the United States was selecting a team to travel to Turkey for the World Athletics Team Championships.
Ray qualified for the championships, and she also met the qualifying standard for the U.S. Olympic Trials. She reached the standard on the very first race, according to Westerfield.
“Now she’s all fired up,” he said. “‘I’m going to make the Olympics.'”
The trip to Turkey didn’t work out in Ray’s favor, but Westerfield said he has been working with her since to get her goals in the right order of magnitude.
“Making the Olympics in 2024 is something that is not really gonna happen, because the qualifying standard to go to the games sets up the 50 best women,” he said. “She’s not there yet. We’re hoping she’ll become one of the better U.S. walkers and then she trains for four years, doing her Rambo training, but race walking Rambo, and she’ll make the Los Angeles Olympic games when she’ll have more experience under her belt and she can go out fast and hold it rather than go out and suffer. I’m really proud of her. She’s got real talent. She’s gotten very strong. She’s going to go out to Springfield, Oregon, and surprise people with how well she does.”
Ray said she is looking forward to competing in the trials for the Olympics and that she is also looking forward to continuing her training with Westerfield.
“And hopefully make the LA Olympics in 2028, as well,” she said.
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