LucasBryant
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Kentucky junior sprinter Abby Steiner won the 200-meter dash gold medal in a collegiate-record-tying time at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships Saturday in Fayetteville, Arkansas, smashing numerous records in the process.
Running in lane five of the banked oval in the Randal Tyson Center, Steiner got a great start from the blocks. She had to battle University of Alabama’s Tamara Clark the entire way, but — as she has done in all seven races this season — held on to strike gold. Her time of 22.38 seconds:
- tied the all-time indoor collegiate record and the NCAA Indoor Championship record (also 22.38 by Gabby Thomas of Harvard)
- tied for second-fastest indoors in United States history (record is 22.33 by Gwen Torrence)
- tied for fifth-fastest indoors in world history (record of 21.87 by Merlene Ottey of Jamaica)
- set a personal best (previous best 22.41 at this year’s SEC Indoor Championship preliminaries)
- broke her own school record of 22.41
- broke her own SEC record of 22.41
- broke the facility record (previous record 22.40 by Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas and Bianca Knight of the University of Texas)
“Abby did exactly what Coach Hall (UK sprints coach Tim Hall) instructed her and executed it. There is a connection that she and Coach Hall have. They work hand-in-hand and she believes in his vison. The best is yet to come for her, I’m excited.”
“Coach Hall told me to be aggressive from the start, never letting off the gas, never getting caught,” Steiner said. “We executed the same way we have all season, and had to because I had amazing competition to pull me along.”
“It’s amazing, it hasn’t sunk in yet,” Steiner said of the win. “Way back in the fall, Coach Hall and I started talking about this title and the record when training began. Tonight we talked about ‘Isn’t it amazing that we are here?’ He believed in me from the beginning and that’s how it played out.”
