LaShawn Merritt
American track and field athlete
LaShawn Merritt (born June 27, 1986) is an American retired track and field athlete who competed in sprinting events, specializing in the 400 metres. He is a former Olympic champion over the distance and his personal best of 43.65 seconds makes him the 13th fastest of all time.
Merritt was a successful junior athlete and won the 400 m gold at the 2004 World Junior Championships in Athletics, as well as setting two world junior records in the relays. He became part of the American 4 × 400 meter relay team and helped win the event at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships. He established himself individually in 2007 by winning a silver medal in the 400 m at the 2007 World Championships.
He came out on top of a rivalry with Jeremy Wariner in 2008 by winning in the 2008 Olympic final in a personal best time, and by a record margin of 0.99 secs. He also broke the Olympic record in the relay with the American team, recording the second fastest time ever. Merritt established himself as the World Champion with a win at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics in the 400 m and the 4 × 400 m
Biography
Merritt is a native of Portsmouth, Virginia where he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. He spent one year as a college athlete at East Carolina University, signing an endorsement contract with Nike during his first season of indoor track, making him ineligible to compete in an NCAA event. Merritt then transferred to Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
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This entry incorporates text from “LaShawn Merritt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.