United States' Abbey D'Agostino is helped from the track after a women's 5000-meter heat during the athletics competitions of the 2016 Summer Olympics at the Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
United States' Abbey D'Agostino is helped from the track after a women's 5000-meter heat during the athletics competitions of the 2016 Summer Olympics at the Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Credit: Martin Meissner

D’Agostino out

The 5,000-meter runner whose act of friendship captured the Olympic spirit will not return to the track in Rio after tearing ligaments in her knee.

Abbey D’Agostino said Wednesday that her season was over, but her message prevailed nonetheless.

She was involved in a chain-reaction wreck Tuesday with New Zealand’s Nikki Hamblin. Instead of scrambling up to keep running, D’Agostino went to Hamblin, helped her up and urged the New Zealander to keep running.

But D’Agostino, a 24-year-old Dartmouth College graduate from Topsfield, Mass., got the worst of the collision. After she finished the race, she was carted off the track in a wheelchair. Later, doctors discovered a torn ACL and strained MCL in her right knee.