In more than 9.95 stunning seconds, British sprinter Louie Hinchliffe on Saturday became the first European to win the men’s 100 meters at the prestigious American collegiate NCAA championships. And afterwards the 21-year-old from Sheffield revealed how a WhatsApp message to nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis asked him: “Can you fix me?” had changed his life.
“I gave it my all, I’ve been working on that all year,” Hinchliffe said after a late burst gave him victory in Eugene, Oregon, in a time that makes him the sixth-fastest Briton ever.
But, as he acknowledged, it was quite a journey as he wanted to be a professional golfer until he was 16. And that when he went to Lancaster University at the age of 18 to study management and IT, he spent more time partying than running because there was no track nearby. “I got on the bus twice a week, 30 minutes away, to train,” he said. “I had no support whatsoever, I was just an ordinary student.”
But winning the 2022 English Championships earned him a sports scholarship to the University of Washington, where he continued to improve. But his big leap forward came last August after he managed to find the phone number of Olympic 100-meter and long jump champion Carl Lewis, a coach at the University of Houston, and asked him to fix it.
“I had a few problems with my hamstrings and my back,” Hinchliffe said. “And I didn’t have much guidance. He said, let’s talk. We had a long phone conversation and he saw a lot of potential in me.”
That call led to Hinchliffe, who also ran a wind-assisted 9.84 seconds early this month, moving to Houston for college — and now to break the 10-second barrier. “It’s always been there. It’s about finding the right place to do it, the right conditions and the right stadium,” he said.
He will now compete in the British Championships in Manchester later this month, which act as the British tests for the Olympic Games in Paris this summer. “I have to forget this, because the most important task is to get to the Olympics,” he admits.
after newsletter promotion
And Lewis is confident he will make it. “He’s going to be great,” he says of Hinchliffe. “He’s in the Olympics this year, I know he’ll make that team.”