Sam Austin Interview


Oviedo senior Samuel Austin was so incredibly close to a sub 1:50 performance for 800 meters on Saturday as optically he did by crossing the finish line in 1:49.991. But as is the standard in fully automatically timing, you round up to the next hundredth of a second, so Austin instead has a 1:50.00 next to his name in the results for the nation's fastest high school boys 800-meter performance so far in 2021 at the Bob Mosher Wildcat Open in Winter Park, Florida.

The University of Florida commit, with outstanding range including personal bests of 47.87 in the 400 and 4:18 in the mile this spring, went after it on Saturday in one of his final races before championship season gets underway with the district championships.

Austin was already the state leader in Florida for the event after running 1:51.24 back in February at the Silverhawk Open. There should be several more quality meet opportunities for him to chase after sub 1:50 including a potential matchup with 4:01 miler and 1:51 800 meter runner Rheinhardt Harrison at their regional and state meet in the 4A classification depending on which events that Harrison opts to run at both.