16-year-old Texas sprinter breaks ridiculous record for 400m

While most 16-year-olds are learning to drive and being pressured by their parents to figure out their career path, Jonathan Simms of Allen, Texas, shattered a near three-decade junior world record in the men’s 400m at the AAU Junior Olympic Games on Saturday.

Simms ran a new personal record to win the 15-16-year-old boys’ championship in a U16 world record of 45.12 seconds.

Simms entered the race as the U.S. national champion with a 46.09-second run at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in June, but his personal best was 45.90, set at the Texas state championships earlier in the season. Simms won the race handily by two and a half seconds and followed up his win with a gold medal in the 4x400m relay later where he split 44.76.

His new record time eclipses Obea Moore’s previous mark of 45.14 from 1995 as the U16 world record. Moore held the record in this event for 28 years. He was expected to be the next great American quarter-miler, to follow the great Michael Johnson, but he never lived up to expectations.

Simms’s new record time is only a tenth of a second shy of the 2024 Olympic standard for the 400m (45.00). Earlier in the week, Simms also won the 800m at the AAU Junior Olympics in 1:51.69, a new personal best.

With such remarkable performances at a young age, Simms has undoubtedly captured the attention of the track and field world as a rising star with immense potential for the future.

posted Monday August 7th
by Marley Dickinson