Ontario teenager who broke indoor world 400-metre record nearly didn’t run race
An Ontario teenager who broke a world indoor record in the men’s 400 metres on the weekend nearly didn’t run the race.
Christopher Morales Williams, 19, a native of Vaughan, told CBC Toronto in an interview on Monday that he wasn’t feeling well. That morning, he said he thought he was nervous, he wasn’t able to eat much breakfast and he took a long nap.
“I went to go eat lunch. I had barely any of it, and then I just started to throw up, when I was about to leave for the bus,” Morales Williams said.
“Immediately after that, everything started to go downhill. I felt so tired even though I had just taken a three-hour nap. I felt really weak. The whole warm-up, I couldn’t even stand for pretty much most of it because I was out of breath. I really wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to run that day. But I think that helped me because I wasn’t really nervous so much about the race anymore,” he added.
“I really wanted to run because I worked so hard to get here.”
The race of his life
Morales Williams pushed through it, running the race of his life. He beat his previous personal best by nearly a second, clocking in 44.49 seconds at the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference championships on Saturday in Fayetteville, Ark.
Morales Williams, a University of Georgia sophomore, broke the previous mark of 44.57 set by American Kerron Clement in 2005 on the same track.
The time also eclipsed American Michael Norman’s 44.52 performance from the NCAA Division 1 indoor championships that couldn’t be ratified as a world mark.
“When I got to about 120 metres to go, I felt amazing, I just didn’t feel that tired at all, so I just kept running, and then I realized, I really want to win this race.”
Morales Williams said one of his biggest inspirations is fellow Canadian sprinter Andre De Grasse. Both are products of Toronto’s Speed Academy.
“I always looked up to him, especially when I saw him at the Pan Am games in 2015, because that was in Canada,” he said. “I just always wanted to follow in his footsteps, because I started doing track and I was like, I just want to be like Andre.”
Hoping to inspire
Now Morales Williams said he hopes he can be an inspiration to young Canadian athletes as De Grasse was for him.
“Hopefully, a lot of people will look up to me and see the things that I’ve done. Hopefully, I inspire them to work harder.”
Morales Williams chose Georgia largely because of coach Caryl Smith Gilbert, who trained De Grasse at the University of Southern California.
Karim Abdelwahab, a coach at the University of Georgia, told CBC Toronto on Monday that it’s a spectacular record and a testament to Morales Williams’ work ethic.
Shaving off nearly a second off his personal best is a big jump and a significant improvement, Abdelwahab added.
“He made it happen,” he said. “It’s a lot… He beat himself by 10 metres almost. He put it all together.”
Morales Williams was part of Canada’s world U20 bronze medal-winning 400 relay team in Cali, Colombia in 2022 and clinched silver at the Pan American U20 Championships the following year.
He missed two years of high school track when schools were shut during the pandemic. He did daily solo long distance runs during that time for training, working up to 12 kilometres.
His record is subject to World Athletics’ ratification process.
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