Gay runner Nico Young makes history as first out man to win U.S. national track title
A late kick at the USATF Outdoor Championships in Eugene delivered 10,00m glory for Nico Young. The post Gay runner Nico Young makes history as first out man to win U.S. national track title appeared first on Outsports.
Mark
In an edge-of-your-seat finale to the first day of competition in Eugene, Oregon, Nico Young emerged as the 10,000-meter winner at the USATF Outdoor Championships on Thursday.
Young’s late kick took him past his rivals Grant Fisher and Graham Blanks and also secured him a spot in the LGBTQ sports history books.
Never before has a publicly out gay man stood on top of the podium as an American track and field champion.
That’s only one part of the 23-year-old’s story, but it’s significant to him. In his coming out post on Instagram, published in August 2022, Young said he wanted to be “a representative and advocate for others like me.”
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Having achieved that at last summer’s Paris Olympics, in what was also an LGBTQ milestone for American male athletes, he now has a national title.
He might yet secure another at Hayward Field, as he’s also slated to run Sunday in the 5,000-meters, his best event and a distance over which he set a U.S. outdoor record time when winning at the Diamond League meet in Oslo in June.
His target is to produce his peak performances at the World Athletics Championships, which begin in six weeks.
Young’s 10,000-meter time of 29:02.12 in Eugene was just .25 seconds faster than that of Olympic bronze medalist Fisher, with Blanks narrowly third in 29:03.66. All three had already met the qualifying standard to take part in Tokyo.
The champion from Camarillo, California, conceded afterwards that the race “was slow for most of it” (Young’s P.B. is 26:52.72, set in March 2024 and a collegiate record).
On the same track a few weeks ago, at the Prefontaine Classic, teenage Ethiopian phenom Biniam Mehary had run 26:43.82 — the fastest 10,000-meter time in the world so far this year. Mehary’s compatriot Berihu Aregawi, the silver medalist in Paris, was second in that race.
But with the Olympic champion Joseph Cheptegei of Kenya not expected to compete in Tokyo, and Young finishing ahead of Fisher, he deserves to be optimistic about his chances.
“I’d like to see how I do in a race that’s maybe like how Paris was this past summer,” he told reporters. He was 12th at his first Olympics, and has progressed and learned so much more over the past year.
That late kick could prove pivotal. Having been lying 12th, he covered the final four laps in 3:57.05, including a closing 400-meter time of 56.54. It was a perfect finish, following a pedestrian start.
There have been other U.S. track champions who are LGBTQ, but none who were publicly out in men’s competitions at the moment of their success.
Kerron Clement was a three-time winner at nationals, in a career that saw him claim two Olympic gold medals. The hurdler came out publicly as gay in October 2019.
In women’s track, Sha’Carri Richardson has U.S. 100-meters titles from 2023 and 2024, while Nikki Hiltz, who is nonbinary, won the outdoor 1,500-meters in 2023.
Yared Nuguse won the men’s equivalent that same year, and the 3,000-meters the following year. He came out publicly as gay in late March, and will be in the 1500-meter final Saturday.
Meanwhile, Trey Cunningham already has a 110-meter hurdles silver medal from 2022, and will go for an upgrade Sunday.
Perhaps Young wears his representation more lightly than others, but as he told Runner’s World in an interview last year, he takes considerable strength from standing out.
LGBTQ fans regularly approach him for selfies and thank him for being visible.
“It means a lot to me,” Young told the magazine. “I hoped to be a voice for people who are struggling.”
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The post Gay runner Nico Young makes history as first out man to win U.S. national track title appeared first on Outsports.
