American 10-mile record holder Keira D’Amato has signed her first professional contract with Nike

Ten-mile American record holder and rising marathon star Keira D’Amato has officially signed a pro contract with Nike. The 36-year-old real estate agent was essentially unknown before this past year, but despite the COVID-19 pandemic, she had the season of her life in 2020. She announced her partnership with Nike on Tuesday via Twitter.

D´Amato has raced several times over the last year, and it seems she keeps getting better every time she toes the line. In June she ran a blazing 5,000m PB in a time of 15:04, and followed that up by winning a 10,000m in July in 32:33.44. She then went on to win the Michigan Pro Half-Marathon in another personal best time of 1:08:57 in October, followed by a 5K road win in 15:08, which was also a PB for the Virginia runner.

Her arguably biggest successes came in her final two races of the year, when D’Amato won the Up Dawg 10-Miler in Washington, D.C., in November, beating Olympic Marathon Trials second-place finisher, Molly Seidel. 

D’Amato ran an incredible 51:23, breaking the American 10-mile record by 49 seconds and finishing more than two minutes ahead of Seidel.

Finally, in December D’Amato had the race of her life at The Marathon Project in Arizona, where she ran to an enormous 11-minute PB of 2:22:56.

In a turbulent year, D´Amato has proven to the world that she is the real deal. While she won’t be competing as a part of the Olympic Marathon team in Tokyo this summer, she has certainly positioned herself as one of the best American distance runners to look out for in 2021, and with this new pro contract backing her up, we expect to see big things from her this year.

posted Thursday February 11th
by Brittany Hambleton