Watching champion sprinter Kai Cole run, he’s practically a blur as he tears across the track.
His time in the 100-meter race at a recent conference should have automatically qualified him for the U.S. Olympic trials. But it appears that a clerical error made by a college athletic conference prevented him from chasing his Olympic dream.
Cole ran relays at Alexandria City High School in Northern Virginia with Noah Lyles, who punched his ticket to Paris this week in a come-from-behind win in the 100-meter race at the Olympic trials. Cole recently closed out his senior year at Norfolk State University and could have had the opportunity to run with his former high school teammate.
In March, Cole won the 100-meter race at the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Outdoor Championships. His official time was 10.05 seconds.
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Cole didn’t know until he got a call from a fraternity brother that his time automatically qualified him for the U.S. Olympic trials.
“This is crazy. I wasn’t expecting that,” Cole said about his excitement when he found out.
But what happened next confused him.
Despite running fast enough, USA Track and Field (USATF) denied Cole an opportunity to compete at the Olympic trials because the conference failed to get the event sanctioned by USATF.
In a statement, MEAC said in part that "USATF policy changes … resulted in the event not being officially sanctioned.”
“It’s just like they tried to push the blame onto someone else,” Cole said in response.
USATF told News4 the changes were made in March 2023, a year before the conference championships and Cole’s last year of college eligibility.
A former coach of Cole’s said he saw right away that the sprinter had rare talent.
“I did a drill with him and he just killed that drill, and I was like, ‘Oh man. This kid’s gonna be special,'” said Kwaku Attoh. He coached Cole during his freshman year at Wesley College, where Cole won the Division III national indoor championship in the 60-meter before he transferred to Norfolk State.
Attoh said he’s sorry Cole didn’t get the chance to compete at a higher level.
"When someone's able to see the fruits of their labor after training hard and doing the right thing, it's very sad for them to not reach their goals and be where they're supposed to be,” he said.
USATF said that out of nearly 1,500 qualifiers, Cole is one of just 15 whose appeal to compete was denied.
Cole said he’s frustrated.
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“Getting the opportunity to run with the best people in the world and for it to be shut down for something that you can't control – it just makes it seem like, what did you do all this for?” he asked.
While Cole was stripped of an opportunity, no one can take away the fact that he ran a time that should have gotten him to the next level.
