Consistency now a strength for Bailey
American who emerged last year favored to win 400 in World Indoor Champs
No 400-meter sprinter enjoys being run down in the final straightaway of a 4 x 400 relay. And that experience can be even more painful when it occurs in a global championship meet.
But the Christopher Bailey who will run in a first-round heat of the men’s 400 in the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing China, on Friday morning, is a more accomplished quarter-miler than he was last year when Alexander Doom of Belgium sped past him for the gold medal in the last 10 meters of the 4 x 400 relay in the meet in Glasgow, Scotland.
Bailey, who is the fastest entrant in the field in Nanjing, entered last year’s meet with a personal best of 44.84 in the 400 meters outdoors and had run under 45 seconds once during his career. But the 24-year-old American dropped his best to 44.31 last season, placed sixth in the Olympic Games in Paris, and closed his 2024 campaign with eight consecutive sub-45 clockings.
He also lowered his short track best to 44.70 in his indoor season opener last month.
“That was my first time running anchor for a national team and it was a good experience because a lot of people shy away from wanting to be the anchor leg in that situation,” Bailey said when talking about his relay effort in last year’s World championships. “But it was a great experience. I’m not too opposed about my performance. Would I want to have that happen again? Definitely not. But I’m glad I got to experience that, because it taught me a lot about what I needed to work on going into the outdoor season, so I couldn’t complain about it.”
Bailey, the oldest of five siblings that also includes a sister and a set of triplet brothers, has learned many lessons while running the 400 through the years, including that nothing is certain, and it’s best for him to take each season one race at a time.
“I don’t try to think too far ahead because in this sport, anything can happen,” he said. “I mean, you can be feeling great one day and the next day, your body feels completely different. I have a schedule of meets I plan to run outdoors, but right now, I’m just focusing on the World Championships. I will start to build back up for the outdoor season after that.”
In contrast to his slew of sub-45 clockings last year, Bailey was consistently inconsistent during a collegiate career that saw him run for three programs and never make an NCAA outdoor final in the 400 and only advance to one national title race indoors.
Unlike many world-class performers from the U.S., Bailey was not a standout in high school.
He played football in a recreational league while he was in middle school, and though he was part of a U.S. Army JROTC team that competed against other squads in competitions involving obstacle courses during his first two years at Carver High School in Atlanta, he did not run track until he was a junior.
The 800 was his primary event that season, but he was drawn to the 400 after getting some opportunities to run in the 4 x 400 relay.
As a senior, he ran a personal best of 48.51 in the 400 to place sixth in the 5A Division race of the Georgia High School Association Championships in 2018, but he figured his track career was over after that.
“I did not expect to get a track and field scholarship, so my plan after I graduated was most likely to join the military,” he said. “I planned on becoming a marine, but something in me told me to reach out to this official who had worked one of our regular-season meets. He had a summer club and I ended up running for it.”
The team was the Mercury Track Club and though Bailey only competed in three meets that summer, he said he ran 47.5 in a 400 in the second one of them, which led to a coach from Mississippi Valley State University offering him a scholarship on the spot.
That coach had been replaced when Bailey arrived on the MVSU campus for the fall semester, but he had a productive freshman year that saw him run a personal best of 46.46 to place second in the Southwestern Athletic Conference outdoor championships.
When another coaching change was in the works, Bailey entered the transfer portal and moved on to Tennessee for the 2019-20 academic year.
He had raced sparingly during the first two months of the 2020 indoor season before the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the NCAA indoor championships, as well as all of the collegiate outdoor season.
Issues with his right hamstring led to him only running relay legs during the 2021 indoor season, but he was credited with notable splits of 44.66 and 44.79, respectively, on Tennessee teams that won the 4 x 400 in the Southeastern Conference meet and placed third in the NCAA championships.
“The four by fours were meant for me to get my races in, but not put too much pressure on my hamstrings,” he said. “Whereas an open race out of the blocks would have put a lot more strain on them.”
Bailey had a promising start to the outdoor season when he ran a personal best of 45.25 to win the Florida State Relays in late March, but he finished a disappointing seventh in the SEC championships before being eliminated in the semifinals of the NCAA meet and in the first round of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.
Although injuries with his left hamstring led to abbreviated indoor and outdoor seasons in 2022, he earned his undergraduate degree from Tennessee in kinesiology.
With a year of athletic eligibility remaining, he then enrolled at Arkansas to pursue a certificate in operations management.
The Razorback program has a well-deserved reputation for developing 400-meter sprinters and Bailey lowered his indoor best to 45.09 in January of 2023 before finishing fifth in the NCAA championships and running the first leg on a team that won the 4 x 400 title in 3:02.09 after having run 3:01.09, the second-fastest collegiate time in history, earlier in the season.
However, his final collegiate outdoor season was not what Bailey had hoped for, as he was eliminated in the semifinals of the NCAA championships. But he broke 45 seconds for the first time in late June when he ran 44.84 to win a section of the Arkansas Grand Prix and he followed that with a seventh-place finish in the USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships in early July.
That performance led to his inclusion in the U.S. national team relay pool for the World championships in Budapest, Hungary, in August and he ran a 44.31 third leg on a foursome that won its qualifying heat in 2:58.47.
Although Bailey did not run on the victorious U.S. team in the final, he was awarded a gold medal because he had helped the squad advance to the final with his performance in the heats.
“It was nice to get that exposure of what it was like to run on a world stage,” he said. “And it taught me about what it’s like to be on a professional circuit. It just prepared me for what I planned on getting myself into, with a professional track career.”
Although Bailey had no more remaining collegiate eligibility last year, he earned his graduate degree in operations management from Arkansas while continuing to train with Razorback assistant coach Doug Case. He also served as a graduate assistant on the track team.
After a short indoor season that included a third-place finish in the 400 in the USATF championships and his duties with the U.S. national team in the 4 x 4 relay in Glasgow, he opened his outdoor campaign with a time of 45.03 to finish second in the LSU Invitational in late April before running a personal best of 44.42 to win the HBCU Pro Classic–The Edwin Moses Legends Meet at Morehouse College in Atlanta on May 31.
That was a particularly enjoyable race for Bailey because a lot of his family members and friends attended the meet, as did his kindergarten and first-grade teacher.
“Me and my friends joke a lot, so in my mind I was like, ‘If I lose this race, they’re going to clown me,’ so I have to win,” he said. “But it was also my first time running in Atlanta since high school and there was a lot of positive energy there. My confidence was boosted with with my friends and family being there.”
His confidence got another shot in the arm nine days later when he finished second to three-time Olympic 400 medalist Kirani James of Grenada in the USATF New York City Grand Prix.
Although Bailey’s time of 44.73 was slower than what he ran in Atlanta, the race was contested in cool and breezy conditions and he finished ahead of third-place Wayde van Niekirk of South Africa, who ran 44.74, and fourth-place Jereem Richards of Trinidad and Tobago, who timed 44.82.
“I felt pretty good about that race because it showed I was in that consistent 44 range,” he said. “And it was also a pretty stacked field so I wasn’t too ashamed of finishing second.”
Next up were the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, where Bailey ran 44.86 in a heat, 44.82 in a semifinal, and another 44.42 in the final to finish third behind Quincy Hall and 2022 World champion Michael Norman.
His sub-45 roll continued in the Olympic Games when he ran 44.89 in the first round, a personal best of 44.31 in the semifinals, and a time of 44.58 for sixth place in a final that was the deepest race in history.
Hall won the gold medal in 43.40, the fifth-fastest time ever, after moving from fourth place to first in the last 40 meters of the race, and Matthew Hudson-Smith of Great Britain finished second in a European record of 43.44. National records were also set by third-place Muzala Samukonga of Zambia, who ran 43.74, and fourth-place Richards, who clocked 43.78.
James, competing in a record fourth Olympic 400 final, finished fifth in 43.87.
“It was pretty good,” Bailey said of his performance, that came while he was running out of the tight confines of lane two. “I wish I could have had a better lane, But you know, that was nobody’s fault but mine. Being in lane two, everyone was outside of me, and I got to see Quincy win it. It was just a great feeling to see him win it, I felt really happy for him.
“I wasn’t upset by my performance because I ran forty-four five eight. I mean, that’s a pretty good time to finish sixth in the world.”
While the Olympic final concluded Bailey’s individual racing for the year, he went on to run a 44.14 anchor leg for the U.S. in a qualifying heat of the 4 x 400 relay and a 44.45 opening leg for an American squad that edged Botswana for the gold medal in the final with a time of 2:54.43, the No. 2 performance in history.
He did not race again until Feb. 14 of this year, but his 44.70 performance in the Tyson Invitational in Fayetteville, Arkansas, was the fastest time in the world this season and moved him to sixth on the all-time indoor performer list.
He followed that by winning the USATF indoor title in 45.21 in Staten Island, New York City, after moving from third place to first down the final backstretch of the race.
Ezekiel Nathaniel of Nigeria is the No. 2 entrant in Nanjing with a best of 44.74, and he has also run 44.92 this season. However, the Baylor University senior is coming off a second-place finish in the NCAA indoor championships in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Saturday when he was edged by Georgia sophomore Will Floyd, who ran 45.43 to Ezekiel’s 45.44.
“I know that nothing’s guaranteed,” Bailey said when asked about his goals for the meet. “I know that each athlete is out there competing for the same thing, which is a World championship title. I know they’re not going to make it easy. So my plan is just to navigate each of my races to the best of my ability. I don’t want to do anything that causes me to exert too much energy during the first two rounds because it’s a quick turnaround. I want to run smart, clean races, and just take it round by round.”
Note — All six sessions of the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China, will be televised/streamed on Peacock in the U.S. There is a 12-hour time difference between Nanjing and the Eastern time zone, so the start times for the six sessions are as follows: March 20 (Thursday), 10:05 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time; March 21 (Friday), 6:20 a.m.; March 21 (Friday), 9:55 p.m.; March 22 (Saturday), 6:20 a.m.; March 22 (Saturday), 9:05 p.m.; March 23 (Sunday), 7:25 a.m.
The following link will take you an event schedule and live results for the meet.