Teens Headline Mid-Distance Battle at Millrose Games
NEW YORK — The men’s sprints won’t be the only buzz at the Millrose Games on Feb. 15. The women’s 800-meter run will feature three of the fastest teenagers in the world battling for supremacy in this middle-distance event.
Americans Ajee’ Wilson and Mary Cain will square off with Iceland’s Anita Hinriksdottir in a showdown that will also feature 22-year-old Jamaican Natoya Goule, who dominated the event at the collegiate level last season.
Wilson, 19, was sixth in the 800m final at the World Championships in Moscow last summer, finishing in an American Junior Record 1:58.21. The New Jersey native claimed global recognition when she struck gold at the World Youth Championships in 2011 and the World Juniors in 2012.
Cain ran away with the Female Rising Star Award at the IAAF World Athletics Gala in Monaco last November after becoming the youngest 1,500m finalist in World Championships history. The 17-yr-old capped a sensational season in which she broke seven national high school records. She also ran below two minutes in the 800m run shortly before Wilson did.
Wilson and Cain have not met on the track since April 2012 when Cain broke the Penn Relays record in the mile. In three previous matchups — all at The Armory — Wilson has had the edge, including the 2011 and 2012 800m finals at the New Balance Nationals Indoor.
Hinriksdottir, who turns 18 this month, became Iceland’s first track & field World champion at the World Youth Games in the Ukraine last summer. She won the 800m in 2:01.13, a half-second off her all-time best and national record of 2:00.49.
Goule won both the NCAA indoor and outdoor 800m championships for Louisiana State University last season as a junior and has since transferred to Clemson University, where her former LSU coach Mark Elliot now heads the track program. She crossed the two-minute barrier at the Jamaica Senior Championships to qualify for the World Championships in Moscow, and was the only runner – male or female – to represent the country in the event at the World Championships.