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Wilkinson, Augustine Complete Olympic Journey
8/5/2024 10:45:00 AM | Men's Cross Country, Men's Track & Field
Wilkinson missed out on an Olympic final spot by one position.
MINNEAPOLIS -- The University of Minnesota saw a pair of Golden Gophers complete competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, with Matthew Wilkinson in the 3000m steeplechase on August 5, and Devin Augustine on August 3. Wilkinson finished sixth overall out of the 36 steeplechase competitors, but due to not finishing inside the top five in his heat, he missed out on a spot in the Olympic final by one position.
Wilkinson, a native of Greenwood, Minn., finished in a near-personal best time of 8:16.82, just 0.23 seconds off of his lifetime best time that he set earlier this year. Wilkinson's 17th place overall finish at the Olympics is the best in program history in the steeplechase, just ahead of Rasa Troup's 19th-place finish for Lithuania at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Only the top five finishers in each of the three 3000m steeplechase semis advanced to the final, leaving Wilkinson out of the final despite finishing ahead of the winners of both heat one, and heat two. There will be one extra qualifier for the Olympic final, Amos Serem of Kenya, who advanced due to being illegally pushed during heat one which resulted in 16 finalists running in the steeplechase final on August 7, instead of the traditional 15 finalists.
At 20-years-old, Augustine made his Olympic debut for his home country of Trinidad & Tobago on August 3 in the 100m. A native of Point Fortin, Augustine raced to a 10.31 (+0.2 m/s) finish to place 47th overall out of 72 competitors in Paris.
Augustine was propelled to the first round of the Olympics and skipped over the preliminary rounds due to Augustine's quality personal best of 10.02 (wind aided) and 10.05 (wind legal). In the first round Augustine ran out of lane six and clocked a reaction time out of the blocks of 0.164 seconds to aid his fifth-place finish in the heat. Augustine's Olympic 100m debut featured 100m African record holder, Ferdinand Omanyala, who won the heat in 10.08 seconds and went on to finish 18th in the semis at 10.08. Augustine, a rising senior, will return to the Gophers for the 2024-25 season.
For more information on the Gophers, continue to check back with GopherSports.com. Keep up with the University of Minnesota cross country and track and field team on X, Instagram (@GopherCCTF) and on Facebook, so you do not miss any content during the season.
Wilkinson, a native of Greenwood, Minn., finished in a near-personal best time of 8:16.82, just 0.23 seconds off of his lifetime best time that he set earlier this year. Wilkinson's 17th place overall finish at the Olympics is the best in program history in the steeplechase, just ahead of Rasa Troup's 19th-place finish for Lithuania at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Only the top five finishers in each of the three 3000m steeplechase semis advanced to the final, leaving Wilkinson out of the final despite finishing ahead of the winners of both heat one, and heat two. There will be one extra qualifier for the Olympic final, Amos Serem of Kenya, who advanced due to being illegally pushed during heat one which resulted in 16 finalists running in the steeplechase final on August 7, instead of the traditional 15 finalists.
At 20-years-old, Augustine made his Olympic debut for his home country of Trinidad & Tobago on August 3 in the 100m. A native of Point Fortin, Augustine raced to a 10.31 (+0.2 m/s) finish to place 47th overall out of 72 competitors in Paris.
Augustine was propelled to the first round of the Olympics and skipped over the preliminary rounds due to Augustine's quality personal best of 10.02 (wind aided) and 10.05 (wind legal). In the first round Augustine ran out of lane six and clocked a reaction time out of the blocks of 0.164 seconds to aid his fifth-place finish in the heat. Augustine's Olympic 100m debut featured 100m African record holder, Ferdinand Omanyala, who won the heat in 10.08 seconds and went on to finish 18th in the semis at 10.08. Augustine, a rising senior, will return to the Gophers for the 2024-25 season.
For more information on the Gophers, continue to check back with GopherSports.com. Keep up with the University of Minnesota cross country and track and field team on X, Instagram (@GopherCCTF) and on Facebook, so you do not miss any content during the season.
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