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'His mentality is medal or bust': Who is Erriyon Knighton, 17, the kid they're calling the new Bolt?

3rd August, 2021
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3rd August, 2021
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It takes a lot of confidence, or maybe just pure innocence, to be asked to compare yourself to another athlete and come up with the name Usain Bolt.

But 17-year-old American Erriyon Knighton isn’t the only one making such comparisons, especially after his eye-catching debut at the Olympics on Tuesday.

The youngest USA track athlete since 1964, he cruised to victory in his 200m heat ahead of the evening’s semifinals. The heat win came easily, and continued an apparently seamless stroll to greatness. The semi was impudent as he swept away the field while sightseeing, his head swivelling from side-to-side down the straight, like he’d just walked in the front doors of Disneyland.

Knighton has only been running track for three years, having made the transition from American football, where his abilities as wide receiver had him fielding offers from the nations’ most famous colleges.

“Knowing that I grew up around football my whole life, and receiving a lot of offers, it was a tough decision, but it was also a no-brainer,” he said. “In track, the success of my career is fully in my hands, and I know that I can do it.”

Knighton first came to attention in June when he clocked 20.11 seconds in an American Track League meet. That edged Bolt’s Under-18 world record of 20.13, set back in 2003.

There was more to come. At the US trials Knighton beat another Bolt milestone – the Jamaican’s best of 19.93 seconds before he turned 20 – when he produced a stunning 19.84.

The Bolt comparisons are predictable, and he clearly doesn’t shy away from them. Asked to compare himself to another runner he answered: “Probably Usain Bolt – just because he’s tall like me.”

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In some ways that’s where the comparisons end. Bolt always had confident swagger, would mug for the cameras before a race, or share social media pictures of himself partying with the Swedish women’s handball team. Knighton’s Indstgram page has 20,000 followers, and just four posts wi=hich are all clearly sponsor mandated.

After his heat on Tuesday Knighton went as far as a goofy little dance as the camera lingered, but he seems shy and reserved, as you might expect from someone thrust into the spotlight so soon.

But he’s in Tokyo to run, not dance, and his Olympics debut got the world talking.

“When it comes to filling the void of Usain Bolt, I think one of the most attractive opportunities is a kid in the 200m from America called Erriyon Knighton, who was the third fastest qualifier for the US team,” said Matt Shirvington.

“Is he the next Usain Bolt? For me, you’re looking at someone who could end up walking away a superstar.”
Knighton was talked into track by a high school coach Joseph Sipp when he was a 14-year-old at Hillsborough High in Tampa Bay, Florida.

“You have a chance to be pretty good on the track,” Yahoo Sports quoted Sipp as telling the youngster.
“Nah, coach, I’m just a football player,” was Knighton’s reply.

And at first he seemed to doubt his abilities.

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“I remember him coming up to me worried like, ‘I’ve got to run against this kid and that kid,” Sipp told Yahoo.
“I was like, Erriyon, you have nothing to worry about. You’re faster than all these guys.”

His coach Jonathan Terry believes Knighton will grow into his fame, and eventually let his personality shine.

“Erriyon is strictly business when he’s preparing for races, but away from the track he has the biggest personality,” Terry told Yahoo.

“We’ve been grooming him to make sure that he’s prepared, but people have to understand that he’s still a kid.”
A school friend, Nigel Richardson, told the New York Times that Knighton was “a quiet, normal, regular high school kid.”

Knighton was asked recently what it was like dealing with the escalating expectation.

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“I’m just being,” he told friends. “Chilling, like I’m a normal person.”

But ‘normal’ kids aren’t stepping onto the track at an Olympic Games, with the world watching and thinking ‘is this the next Usain Bolt?’

(Photo by Getty Images).


On Tuesday Knighton looked made for this stage, running through the curve of the 200m like it wasn’t there – “when you come off the turn, it’s basically like a slingshot,” he says.

According his coach, another thing he shares with Bolt is a desperation to win.

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“His straight mentality is it’s medal or bust,” Terry said. “If he doesn’t medal it is a blank trip to the Olympics.”

This is just the start. He’s signed a six-figure deal with Adidas, using the money to pay for his own phone, and his mum with her bills.

After the Games he will be heading back to school, where a classmate wrote this about him in the school newspaper, under the headline Erriyon Knighton: The Sprinter.

“He’s got goals outside of running. He’s not allowed to run for a college track team, but that’s not going to stop him from going to university, especially since it will be paid for by Adidas.

“He thinks he’d like to study medicine, because he has family members that could help him out, like his mom, a nurse.

“He has a lot of self-motivation. He thinks it would be much harder for him to keep working if he didn’t.
“Aside from his professional running career, Knighton lives a relatively normal teenage life. Switching back and forth from his parent’s houses, visiting grandparents and cousins on the weekends, going bowling with his mom, and dreaming, not too unrealistically, of buying a Dodge Charger as his first car.”

But, it also reported, “He says there are a lot of people he doesn’t know that hate on him out of jealousy.”

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Knighton told the paper: “Some people don’t know what’s going on — they think I dropped out of high school, but I be here everyday. They’re looking from the outside in. At the end of the day, they really just help me. I feed off of stuff like that.”

When his Olympics is over, Knighton will head home to mom, dad and the ongoing process of growing up and getting faster.

“Right when I get home from Tokyo, I’m off to school,” he said. “I don’t really like that. I feel like I should get a couple days off but I can’t I gotta go to school.”

But if he is like Bolt, he’ll be back on our screens again, and again. He has the work ethic, if not yet the same swagger.

“What motivates me every day is people who are better than me,” he says. “I just want to be the best. Out of everybody out there working, I want to work two times harder.”

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