Symmonds on fast track in the 800

Published Wednesday, June 20, 2007

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The 800 meters is the forgotten race in the United States. Nick Symmonds is on a fast track from obscurity to change that.

With his victory in the 800 at the Prefontaine Classic in early June and his first-place showing at the U.S. Indoor meet, Symmonds’ life of anonymity is nearing an end.

Success "is certainly coming quicker than I expected," said Symmonds, who will aim at another notch in his climb this week at the U.S. Track and Field Championships.

Success was nothing new for him, just not at this level.

The 23-year-old Symmonds was a seven-time NCAA Division III champion at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., winning the 800 all four years and the 1,500 three times.

The buzz about Symmonds intensified after he ran down Olympic gold medalist Yuri Borzakovskiy at the Prefontaine Classic on June 10 in Eugene, Ore. Symmonds passed the Russian with a furious kick in the final few meters and set a personal-best record time of 1 minute, 44.54 seconds.

"I don’t think he expected anyone to out-kick him. He was pretty surprised," Symmonds said.

Symmonds has pushed everything aside to try to make the Olympic team. He’s put his medical school ambitions on hold and simplified his life. He’s moved into a house in Springfield, Ore., that backs up to running trails, cooks his own meals, rarely goes out and is in bed every night by 10 p.m.

"Cutting out all these distractions and" devoting "100 percent of my attention to running, there’s no reason I can’t be one of the best in the world," he said.