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Kentucky is known for fast horse racing. Now the Bluegrass State is gaining recognition for the fastest sprinting – by a woman.
At the recent NCAA Women’s Outdoor Track and Field Championship, Abby Steiner of the University of Kentucky ran the fastest 200 meters – 21.80 seconds – of any woman who has ever raced this distance in college. It was also the seventh fastest finish of all time, and the fastest time by any woman this year.
With a stunning second-half burst, watch her blast by her college opponents in this video: https://youtu.be/EtVDS2nUBm8.
She followed up that record-breaking dash by winning her first national title with a 21.77 in the 200 meters at the recent USA Outdoor Track and Field Championship. (America’s Florence Griffith-Joyner holds the world record in the 200 meters with a time of 21.34).
Steiner, 22, is competing this week in the World Athletic Championships in Eugene, Oregon. If she qualifies for the finals in the 200 meters tonight, you’ll be able to see her run in the finals on Thursday at 9:45 pm on the USA Network, Direct TV, and Dish Network.
Steiner’s college career, now completed, was spectacular on multiple levels. For 2022 she won the Southeastern Conference’s Track and Field Athlete of the Year Award. She may have been able to make the U.S. team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but suffered an Achilles tendonitis injury that kept her out of qualifying competition.
Her rise to elite sprinter status hasn’t been the normal path. She didn’t begin sprinting at a super early age and specializes in this one sport. Her first sporting love was soccer, which she picked up at the age of four.
Remarkably, she came to the university on a two-sport scholarship for track and soccer. In her first year, she started in 19 games on the soccer team before focusing on track. In high school, she won 16 state track titles after picking up the sport in eighth grade. On the soccer field in high school, she won player of the year honors in the state of Ohio and was named a high school All-American.
All along the way, she’s been stellar in the classroom earning a 3.8-grade point average. This year she was honored as the SEC’s women’s track and field scholar-athlete of the year.
She’s done all this while overcoming adversity that often has a significant adverse effect on an athlete seeking to achieve elite status. In her junior year of high school, she tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her knee. But somehow recovered and became one of the fast sprinters on Earth.
Not just a 200 meter one race wonder, Steiner also posted elite times this year in the 100-meter dash. Her 10.92 at the NCAA meet was the fifth fastest in college history. (Griffith-Joyner set the world record in the 100 meters in 1988 with a time of 10.49).
She says her studies have helped. She majored in kinesiology in college learning about mechanisms of movement, exercise, and physical activity.
This is a woman doing amazing things on the track and in the classroom. It’s likely she’s going to thrill us on the track over the next few years as her track career continues to blast ahead.
Given her multi-dimensional talents, she also seems destined for future professional success off the track. She plans to return to the University of Kentucky to take graduate courses that will help her become a physical therapist.
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