The Class Of 2016: Michael Norman


With the 2020 (2021) Olympics underway in Tokyo and track and field competition approached next week, we decided to roll-out our Class of 2016 profiles again, featuring a crop of talented athletes from the United States. 


The Class of 2016 has the potential to go down as the greatest crop of track and field athletes from one graduating class ever. 

A handful of athletes from that year have already won NCAA titles, earned international medals and set new American and World records. We caught up with them as they prepared for their biggest test yet: The U.S. Olympic Trials. 

Up next in our series is 2016 Vista Murrieta (CA) graduate Michael Norman, a two-time Gatorade National Athlete of the Year, a World U20 champion at 200m and one of California's all-time greatest athletes who set a 200m state record in 20.14 (+1.6) -- at the U.S. Olympic Trials, where he finished fifth -- and ran the third-best 400m time of 45.19.

And yet, Norman's true rise would take place while he was competing for the University of Southern California, where he won four NCAA Championships and set in 2018 a then-World Indoor Record of 44.52 seconds in the 400m -- which later was not ratified -- before going on to qualify the World Championships in 2019.

He holds career best performances of 19.70 in the 200m and 43.45 in the 400m and currently stands as one of the United States' most promising athletes of his generation. 

On Sunday, he became a first-time Olympian, too. 



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