It was just about the performance."Ĭollier, Boling's high school coach, says, "I've heard people compare Matthew to Tiger Woods, because Tiger inspired black kids to take up golf, and maybe Matthew inspires some white kids to try sprinting." (Clearly, the access issue here is not analogous, but that doesn't mean the hypothetical is invalid.)ĭavid Oliver, bronze medalist in the 110-meter hurdles at the 2008 Olympics, '13 world champion in that event and now the coach at Howard, says, "With him being a white guy, and doing amazing things in the sprint and jumps, of course that's a big deal, and it's all good. But once I hit the world scene, won that gold medal, it was never about race after that. "I didn't have to deal with social media. "It was mainly a media thing, people talking about me being the white guy," says Wariner, 35, a high school track coach in his hometown of Dallas. His best time of 43.45 seconds is equal to the sixth-fastest ever. Olympic team in the 400 meters in 2004, after his sophomore year at Baylor, then won gold in Athens. Jeremy Wariner, who is white, made the U.S. Once you're legitimized, the other stuff takes care of itself." But if people are questioning whether you belong, the best thing to do is lay down a fast time on the track. It's bigger in America than other places in the world. "I don't think we've progressed very far on this," says Little, now 51. Little was a white 200-meter runner he finished eighth in the 1996 Olympic trials and won the '97 indoor world championship. Two decades ago Kevin Little underwent a similar experience, though without the amplification of social media. My competitors respect me, I respect them. Inside the sport, whenever you get into the block, all that matters is who's fastest. That stuff only comes up outside the track. The story is that I have the top time in the nation.
"I see things in the comments and on social media," Boling says. It was obscene.īoling has tried to turn away, a massive challenge for a teenager (with a new phone) in 2019. Websites devoted to white nationalist and neo-Nazi voices adopted Boling. The Internet gave Matthew a nickname: White Lightning. Still, the stereotype that Nehemiah described persists. (The world record for the 100 is Usain Bolt's 9.58 in 2009.) The reigning world champion in the 200 meters is Ramil Guliyev of Turkey. In the 200 meters, Christophe Lemaitre of France took bronze in 2016 and also has run 9.92 for 100 meters. Before that, Valery Borzov of the former Soviet Union won gold in '72 and bronze in '76. The last white Olympic medalist in the 100 meters was Allan Wells of Great Britain, who won gold in 1980, when the U.S. This reaction is baked into the sport, where it's long been assumed that black athletes will dominate sprints. A reporter from a British tabloid knocked on the family's front door on two consecutive nights, promising to tell "the real story behind Matthew."
He appeared on NBC Nightly News, CNN and BBC. On YouTube multiple versions of that race each have nearly a million views. I didn't even care about the wind." Video of the performance exploded. "Crowd went crazy," says Boling, recalling the moment. No high school sprinter had ever run that fast, even with wind at his back. And then on April 27, at the region championships in Webster, Texas, Boling ran 100 meters in 9.98 seconds, though with a tailwind of 4.2 meters per second (just under 10 mph), more than twice the allowable limit for record purposes. Two weeks later Boling ran a slightly wind-aided 10.20 to win the 100 at the Texas Relays, and also long-jumped 26'3", the best this year by a high school athlete (and the 11th best in history). (The high school record is 10.00.) This was big, but also just a prelude. "That looked awful fast on the paper," he says.īoling ran 10.28 in his preliminary heat and 10.22 in the final, a time that's at the outer edges of the best by any high school runner. "So I was pretty confident about that number." "Matthew had run some pretty amazing splits on our ," says Collier. Strake coach Chad Collier submitted a seed time of 10.35 seconds, which would have ranked ninth among U.S. This was not planned: Strake was missing an injured runner for the 4 x 400-meter relay, so with no long relay to run, Boling was available for his first open 100 meters.
On March 16 at the Texas Southern Relays in Houston, Boling was entered in the 100 meters, the one event in which a track star can most readily become known outside the picket fence.