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Biography
As a 5-foot-2 95 lb. sophomore in high school Nick Symmonds decided to give up soccer to try out for the track team. While soccer might have been his first love it was his track career that tagged him “The Legend”.
Nine state championships, seven national championships and a streak of 50 plus races won in the 800m between high school and college made his amateur career somewhat of an urban legend among the Northwest. Now a professional, Nick is primed to take his legend to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
Nick is a distance runner from Boise, Idaho who specializes in the 800m and 1500m. In just two years of professional competition he is a 2007 Boston Indoor Games Champion at 800m, 2007 USA Indoor Champion at 800m, 2007 Osaka Grand Prix Champion at 800m as well as a 2007 Prefontaine Classic Champion at 800m. His time of 1:44.54 in the 800m competition at the Prefontaine Classic is the second fastest time ever recorded on American soil. Nick is also a twotime USA Outdoor Championship runner-up in 800m.
Despite his late start to the sport, Nick took the state of Idaho by storm, competing for Bishop Kelly High School. As a junior, only his second year of competitive track, he won the Idaho State Title is the 800m, 1600m, 3200m and 4x400-meter relay. He repeated all titles in his senior year and added a State Championship in the 5k cross-country.
He decided to take his illustrious career to Willamette University, a Div-III liberal arts school in Salem, Oregon. Despite the rigorous academic demands that came for the biochemistry major, it didn’t take long for him settle in. Nick won NCAA Div-III National Championships in the 800m and 1500m in his freshman year. He would go on to win the National Championship in the 800m in each of his four years at Willamette. He would win the 1500m again in both his junior and senior year. In 2005 he was named the Div-III Track and Field Male Athlete of the Year and was also the recipient of the Ad Rutschman Award, given to Oregon’s top small college athlete.
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