Erriyon Knighton ran another historic sprint time, then returned to high school

On Aug. 4, 2021, 17-year-old Erriyon Knighton became the youngest man to race in an individual Olympic track final in 125 years. He finished fourth in the 200m in 19.93 seconds. Nobody else has ever run that fast that young.

While the top three finishers prepared to receive medals, Knighton entered a tunnel at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo. He wept.

“I was kind of sad, but I couldn’t really be bothered about it,” he said this week. “I was just getting started on my career.”

Mike Holloway remembers that night. He wasn’t allowed in that area of the stadium, but he reached Knighton by phone.

“He was obviously upset,” said Holloway, who along with Jonathan Terry coaches Knighton. “I was just like, ‘Look, man, remember how you feel. And remember, you don’t want to ever feel this way again. So every training session we do next year, remember how you feel right now and that you never want to feel this way again.'”

Last Saturday, Knighton lined up to race a 200m for the first time since the Tokyo Games. It was at the untelevised LSU Invitational in Baton Rouge, at best the third-biggest meet of the day after the Penn Relays and Drake Relays.

At 3:35 p.m. local time, the LSU track and field Twitter account posted a single-camera, zoomed-out video of the first of five heats of the men’s 200m. There is no commentary. Just the public address announcer. It becomes clear about 50 meters into the race that Knighton is the man in lane five with a white-to-black Adidas uniform, pulling away.

Knighton crossed the finish line and did not have a view of a scoreboard. Holloway was there. What did I run, Knighton asked. Holloway told him: 19.49 seconds. No, I didn’t, Knighton replied.

“So, you know, he was pretty crunk about it,” Holloway