Houston's Louie Hinchcliffe Wins 100 Meters; Christopher Morales-Williams of Georgia Ekes Out 400 Meters Title

By Lori Shontz for DyeStat

Logan Hannigan-Downs photos

EUGENE, Ore. -- After qualifying first in the 200 meters Wednesday night at the NCAA Division 1 Outdoor Men’s Championships, Penn State sprinter Cheickna Traore graded himself with a B, and he said it wasn’t good enough. To win the title, he said, he’d need an A.

He gave himself a C for his performance Friday night at Hayward Field, but that didn’t matter. A year after winning the Division 3 title for Ramapo, Traore won the Division 1 title, running a wind-legal 19.95, comfortably ahead of Florida’s Robert Gregory, who finished in a season-best 20.08.

“I knew I could win – it was just a matter of putting it together,” Traore said. “Even though it was a C race, I’ll take a C race and a national championship.”

Traore is the first sprinter from Penn State to win the NCAA title in the 200 meters in 83 years. 

Traore was one of three international athletes to win a sprint title, and this was not simply a matter of rounding up the usual suspects from powerhouses like the United States and Jamaica. Traore competes for Ivory Coast. The 100-meter champion, Houston sophomore Louie Hinchliffe, runs for Great Britain. The 400-meter champion, Georgia sophomore Christopher Morales-Willliams, who completed the indoor-outdoor sweep, hails from Canada.

The last time international athletes had swept all three sprints at NCAAs? 1997.

In the 100, Hinchliffe had been waiting to break the 10-second barrier this season; he wasn’t satisfied with the wind-aided 9.84 he’d posted at the West First Round. He wasn’t worried; he said he just needed the right situation.

He got it on Friday.

As usual, he didn’t get out of the blocks as fast as his competition, but he steadily gained as the race went on, relying on his top-end speed to finish in 9.95. He crossed ahead of two runners from Auburn, junior Favour Ashe and freshman Kanyinsola Ajayi, who ran 9.99 and 10.01, respectively.

“It’s been like that since I was a kid – it’s always been the last 30 (meters),” Hinchliffe said. “Slow to start, but just give everything to the line. Stay patient, stay relaxed – it all comes together at the end.”

In the 400, Morales-Williams’ outdoor title capped a strong sophomore season for the 19-year old. He set an unofficial 400-meter indoor world record, running 44.49 at the SEC championships, then won the indoor NCAA title, becoming the first Canadian to do so. At the SEC outdoor meet, he ran 44.05, breaking the Canadian outdoor record that had stood since 2005. That’s the year Morales Williams was born.

His time Friday was much slower – 44.47, just ahead of freshman Samuel Ogazi of Alabama, who ran a personal-best 44.52 to elevate to the No. 6 competitor in World U20 history, and senior JeVaughn Powell of Florida, who ran a personal-best 44.54. The three runners came off the turn together and headed down the home stretch together.

“Last 50, we’re like in a line,” Morales-Williams said. “I haven’t been in a line in a long time; I’ve been quite ahead toward the end. Now I’m under pressure. It’s been a while since I’ve been under pressure. Now I’m fighting, I’m fighting, I’m fighting, I’m fighting, and I’m thinking to myself – I really don’t want to lose.”

He said there was a simple reason he didn’t quite have the gear he’d found throughout the season: “Probably because I’ve done like 400 400s this year, and it’s the last one,” he said.

In short: He’s tired. It isn’t the same kind of tired was a year ago, when he didn’t make the finals at SEC or NCAAs but was just tired because he was a freshman. “This is the most 400s I’ve run and won in a year, and it starts to get tiring,” he said. “I’m only a human. I’m not God. I can’t run a 400 and win a PB every single race.”

Next up for all three runners: some rest.

Hinchliffe needs to compete at the UK trials, and he said he needs to forget about this NCAA title and focus on the bigger goal. Morales-Williams also needs to compete at the Canadian trials, but those are three weeks away, and he said he won’t have the pressure of finishing in the top three, as he would at the U.S. trials.

Traore has already secured his Olympic berth. He got the standard earlier this season, when he ran 19.93, and that’s all he needed to make the Ivory Coast team.