Steiner slows down to run fast
Return from injury teaches sprinter to ‘appreciate moments’
Like most college seniors, Abby Steiner of the University of Kentucky stands on the precipice of a new chapter in life – namely national- and world-class status as an accomplished sprinter whose performances have placed her in elite company.
Yet her feet remain planted in collegiate starting blocks for now.
As an athlete who knows from painful experience how quickly things can change, Steiner is relishing her final weeks as a Wildcat and focusing on helping the women’s track and field team accomplish big goals, utilizing a sense of patience she developed through trying times last year.
“If I get too far ahead of myself, I’m not going to appreciate the moments I have in college right now and I want to make the most of being a collegiate athlete and being on this Kentucky team,” Steiner said at a pre-meet press conference on Monday.
She knows if things go well in the next three meets, she will be regarded as a legitimate contender to make the U.S. national team in the women’s 200 – and possibly in the 100 – meters when the USA Track & Field Championships are held at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field from June 23-26. A top-three finish in that meet would qualify her for the World Championships – which will also be held at Hayward Field – from July 15-24.
But today through Saturday, she’s paying attention to the Southeastern Conference Championships at the University of Mississippi’s Ole Miss Track & Field Complex.
“That’s really the main focus, just being on the team and doing what I need to do at each meet to put our team in position to do something special.”
Kentucky surprised many by finishing third behind Florida and Texas in the NCAA Indoor Championships in March, and Steiner and her teammates figure another top-three finish could be possible when the NCAA outdoor meet is held at Hayward Field from June 8-11.
Steiner accounted for 19½ of the Wildcats’ 44 points in the indoor meet by winning her second consecutive title in the 200, finishing second in the 60, and running a leg on a 1,600 relay team that placed third. Those efforts capped a superb indoor season in which she set a collegiate record of 35.80 seconds in the 300 in her first meet in December and ran an American record of 22.09 in the 200 in winning her third consecutive title in the SEC Championships in February.
Only Merlene Ottey of Jamaica, who set the world record of 21.87 in 1993, has run faster than Steiner indoors. But Steiner is keenly aware that success in outdoor championships is the ultimate barometer by which track and field athletes are measured.
She learned that lesson the hard way last year when a severe case of Achilles’ tendinitis basically wiped out the last eight weeks of her outdoor track season.
Steiner, who tied the then-collegiate record of 22.38 in winning the NCAA Indoor Championships in 2021, ran a solid 22.79 to win the Tom Jones Memorial meet at the University of Florida in mid-April of last year. But she began to experience pain in her left Achilles’ shortly thereafter and it got progressively worse.
“We did everything in our power to get her all the medical attention she needed,” said Lonnie Greene, Kentucky’s head coach. “But what she really needed was rest and that’s why we eventually had to shut things down. We had to do what was best for her.”
Steiner did run in a first-round heat of the 200 in the East Preliminary meet in Jacksonville, Florida, on May 27 last year. But her time of 23.59 was 27th fastest in the field of 46 competitors and failed to advance her to the 24-runner quarterfinal round, where a top-12 finish would have qualified her for the NCAA Championships.
“That was an injury we were just trying to figure out as the season went along,” Steiner said. “We did everything we could medically. But sometimes with those tendon injuries, the most important thing you can do is rest.”
Steiner described her injury issues last spring as “a little bit of a battle” for her emotionally because she was coming off such a successful indoor season and had a good idea of what she was capable of outdoors during the Olympic year. However, she took solace in the fact she had another year of collegiate competition.
“It was really about just stepping back and making sure we were focused on my senior year and the possibility of the World Championships,” she said. “So I learned how to be patient throughout that journey.”
Tim Hall, an assistant coach at Kentucky and the person who works most closely with Steiner, said resilience is her greatest strength. That quality has been instrumental in her currently ranking first in the 100 (10.92) and second in the 200 (22.05) on the yearly outdoor collegiate list, Hall said.
“Once she sets a goal, she is so determined to get it that she wants nothing or no one to interfere with her reaching it,” he said. “Everybody sees her talent. Everybody sees her times. But working with her on a daily basis, I see the time she puts in. I see the effort she puts in. It’s remarkable. She’s just very resilient about getting things done.”
One of the topics Steiner reflected on in recent weeks was her decision in November of 2018 to stop playing soccer and focus on track year-round.
Steiner had played soccer for several years before she started running track when she was in the eighth grade. She was recruited to Kentucky as a two-sport athlete and started as a striker on the Wildcat women’s soccer team as a freshman in 2018. But after training with the track and field team for two weeks following the end of soccer season, she concluded sprinting was her athletic passion.
“I could just feel in my heart that it was something I was passionate about and wanted to pursue at the highest level and give my full attention to,” she said.
Though Steiner was a high-caliber soccer player throughout high school, she began to think about becoming a sprinter full-time toward the end of her senior track season at Coffman High School in Dublin, Ohio.
She ran 11.38 in the 100 and 22.73 in the 200 that year to rank fourth and third, respectively, on the yearly national high school lists. The 200 time, in particular, got her thinking because it moved her to seventh on the all-time national high school performer list.
Among those in front of her were Allyson Felix, who set the national high school record of 22.11 in 2003, and Marion Jones, who had run 22.58 to finish fourth in the women’s 200 in the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials.
Felix has since become the most decorated track and field athlete in history, having won 11 medals – including seven gold – in five Olympic Games and 16 medals – including 11 gold – in nine World Championships.
Jones won an unprecedented five medals – including three gold – in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, before her legacy was later destroyed by a performance-enhancing drug scandal.
“When I looked at the names on the all-time list that I was around, I kind of started to see I really had a future in the sport,” Steiner said.
Hall, who first became aware of Steiner when he was an assistant coach at Tennessee, was delighted to have the opportunity to work with her at Kentucky. But he said it took a little time before she truly believed what he and other coaches were telling her about her talent.
“We told her she had the potential to run this fast and she looked at me like I was kind of crazy at first,” he said. “But she soon bought in to what we were telling her. What I mean is she really let her guard down and allowed her athletic prowess to just manifest itself. And the rest is history.”
Though Steiner said she spent much of her freshman season learning how to be a true sprinter, she ran 22.97 in the 200 indoors and lowered her outdoor bests to 11.32 in the 100 and 22.59 in the 200. She qualified for the NCAA indoor and outdoor meets in the 200, but did not advance to the final in either competition.
Then came 2020. Steiner lowered her indoor 200 best to 22.57, the fastest time in the world that year, and won her first SEC title in the event. But the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the NCAA Indoor Championships in March, as well as the entire outdoor season.
That was followed by her outstanding indoor season last year and the injury-shortened outdoor campaign.
Greene is an enthusiastic and unabashed Steiner backer, who proudly says his wife calls her “Superstar.”
Steiner has what he calls the gift.
“There are some people who can run,” he said. “There are some people who have talent. And there are some people who got the gift. I believe God gives certain people a certain measure of blessing. I think she’s got the gift, and the beautiful thing about it is she works the gift. She is prepared. She is focused, and she is locked in day in and day out.”
Steiner’s top-end speed is one of the things that is most impressive when you watch her sprint.
She did not have a great start in the Joe May Invitational at LSU on April 9 and was in no better than sixth place in the eight-runner field after the first 50 meters of the race. But she ended up lowering her personal best from 11.10 to 10.92 and finished well ahead of second-place Favour Ofili (11.00) of LSU and third-place Mikiah Brisco (11.04) of the Tiger Olympians Track Club.
Ofili, a sophomore from Nigeria, has since run 10.93 in the 100 and a collegiate-record 21.96 in the 200. Brisco was the silver-medalist in the 60 in the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, in March.
Not surprisingly, Steiner is highly competitive on the track. But she has a down-to-earth, unassuming personality off of it.
“She is one of the most humble individuals I’ve ever encountered,” Hall said. “If you met her on the street, you would not know who she is and what she has accomplished. She is very polite, very humble, almost bashful in the sense that when you talk about her accomplishments, she is almost like, Oh, is that really me?”
Academics and family are both very important to Steiner.
She was awarded an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology last Friday and was named the SEC’s female outdoor track and field scholar athlete of the year on Wednesday. She also received the award for the indoor season.
She says some of the most memorable moments of her Kentucky athletic career have come when her mom, Mollie, and dad, David, have watched her compete in person.
“I know that definitely this season, I’ve tried to make the most of those times when I’m on the podium,” she said. “To find them in the crowd, and be able to reflect on that and share those moments with them has been very special.”
Many collegiate track and field fans are looking forward to Saturday evening when Steiner and Ofili are expected to lock horns in the finals of the women’s 100 – scheduled to start at 7:25 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time – and 200 – at 8:25.
However, Hall said it’s important Steiner not get caught up in talk about a rivalry with Ofili.
“This is not a rivalry between Ofili and Steiner,” he said. “We have two tremendous athletes who happen to be in the best conference in the country, being coached by the best coaches in the country. And what you get as a result is a very entertaining competition. The more you take on the, Oh, I have to race her mentality, the more you are taking away from what matters. And what matters is allowing her body to do what we’ve conditioned it to do and let the results take care of themselves.”
Steiner finished well ahead of runner-up Ofili in both the SEC and NCAA indoor meets in the 200, but she has immense respect for her opponent.
“I’m super excited about running against her,” she said. “We had some great battles indoors and I think we always push each other to run our bests. So I’m excited and I hope we can make some history together.”