On Friday at New Balance Nationals Outdoor Kingsway's Samuel Allen brought home the 3000m Race Walk Championship title with a time of 13:31.53, a full nine seconds ahead of the field. This was a even more than a Championship race walk, this was an epic rematch in the making.
One of the best finishes of New Balance Nationals Indoor came during the mile race walk between New Jersey's Samuel Allen and Ohio's Sean Glaze, it went down to the line after an elbow to elbow battle around the track and Glaze got the win by .02! They met once again on Friday in Greensboro, NC, with Glaze the defending champion, and in this race Kingsway's Allen got it done with room to spare ahead of Glaze's 13:40.82.
Sean Glaze was defending his 14:24.95 win in 2018 at NBNO, Allen had finished fifth in that race with a 15:33.41. You can see the progression for both athletes in the matter of a year but Allen dropped a full two minutes from that performance.
"I just went straight from the gun, all out the whole time, and tried to hold on the entire race and it worked," Allen stated post-race, "We had around the same 3K time so I knew going to be close."
Both of these athletes are juniors and will be back for another showdown next year. Allen will be competing in the USATF U20 Outdoor Championships this coming week.
