St. Augustine's Student Becomes "Fastest Man Alive"

By Kendrick Marshall
Black College Wire

U.S. Olympic Team; Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Justin Gatlin embraces Shawn Crawford after the men's.

Justin Gatlin made the incredible leap from jumping over fire hydrants while growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., to bringing home a gold medal for the United States at the Athens Olympics and claiming the title �fastest man alive.�

Gatlin, 22, attends St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, N.C., part-time, working on a degree in communications. He is one of the few 2004 Olympians with ties to a historically black college. When he ran the 100-meter sprint in 9.85 seconds on Aug. 22, he became the race�s youngest winner in 36 years. The race also set a record as the first in which five runners finished in less than 10 seconds.

�It�s a new era for young athletes all over the world,� Gatlin told reporters in Athens after his historic victory.

Gatlin also won a bronze medal in the 200-meter race, finishing behind gold medal winner Shawn Crawford and silver medalist Bernard Williams. Their feat made it a clean sweep for the Americans for the first time since the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

His gold-medal win was a surprise to track experts who had predicted that the flamboyant, previous 100-meter champion, Maurice Greene, would win.

But Gatlin was a champion even before arriving in Athens.

Gatlin won the NCAA indoor and outdoor track championships while a student at the University of Tennessee in 2001. He also won the Southeastern Conference championship in the 60-meter race and was the NCAA track freshman of the year in 1999.

Gatlin�s professional career began to take off after he moved to Raleigh to train with Trevor Graham, the controversial coach whose string of track stars once included Marion Jones, the first woman to win five medals at one Olympics.

During his brief career training with Graham, Gatlin won the U.S. world indoor championship in the 60-meters in 2003. At the U.S. Olympics qualifying 100-meter race, he won, upstaging Greene.

After that victory, some predicted that Gatlin was the next Carl Lewis, and would be a fixture in American track for years to come.

�He grew as the year went on and you could see that he was headed in the right direction,� said George Williams, the track coach at St. Augustine's who also is the U.S. men�s Olympic team�s head track coach.

Williams is another HBCU success story. In the spring of 2004, he was named head coach of probably the fastest and youngest U.S. track team ever. His runners hold him in deep affection, with some saying he treats each one as if the runner were Williams� own son. Gatlin�s training partner in Raleigh is another Olympic teammate, Crawford, the gold medal winner in the 200-meters. �I�m proud that I had the chance to train and compete with an Olympic champion,� Crawford said of Gatlin.

The torch was symbolically passed to Gatlin when former Olympic champion Michael Johnson hugged the U.S. sprinter before the 100-meter final.

�He is someone who can be great for a long time,� said Johnson in an interview with NBC before the Olympics got underway.

Kendrick Marshall, a student at Jackson State University, is editor of The Blue and White Flash.

Posted Aug. 30, 2004