Nelson’s Matti Erickson has taken home gold in the men’s 800m at the NCAA Track and Field Championships over the weekend, clinching the title in 1:46.43.
The 22-year-old, representing the University of Oregon, says while it wasn’t it fasted time, it was his best performance to date.
“It was within like a second of the fastest I’ve ever run, but it was probably my best performance I’ve ever put down, even though the overall time itself wasn’t as fast as I’ve run in the past. The decision making in a field of that caliber was really hard and I was really proud of myself for that.”
Erickson says a lot of work went into the championship preparations, and he is still processing his win.
“It feels good to have all of that hard work paid off,” He said.
“From the outside looking in, I wasn’t one of the favorites on paper, at least. I qualified 15th out of 16 in the field.”
“But in my mind, I knew that training had been going well, and I’d won a big meet just a couple of weeks before and I was feeling really good.”
“My coach and I had talked about the chances of me winning, he wasn’t expecting it, but he knew that it was a possibility and so that gave me a lot of confidence going into the race.”
Erickson is the ninth fasted Canadian man over 800m in history and to top it off, he is the first Canadian track athlete to sign with U.S sportwear giant NIKE, marking a huge milestone for Canadian athletes in the NCAA.
Big achievement from the man raised in the small town of Nelson in the Kootenays.
“I spent so much time running around in Nelson just down at Lakeside, in the gym at the NDCC- you know there’s a lot of locals that have seen me just ripping down Highway 3A and all that time I wouldn’t be listening to music, I wouldn’t be thinking about anything else other than my goals that I wanted to achieve in the future and this was a big one, so to be able to actually do it you know it’s very fulfilling it feels really good.” said Erickson.
“I’d like to thank my parents and the support system that I had in place, to the city of Nelson- you know it takes a village to produce a big performance like that and so being able to grow up in Nelson all my friends in town all the people that I know that supported me through the years, I’m really thankful for their support and it definitely couldn’t happen without them.”
So, what’s next for the Nelson local?
“Right now, I think I’m just going to take a little bit of downtime. I’ve been traveling a lot just for competitions the last six weeks and it’s tough on your body to do that.” He said.
“I am going to let my body and mind relax and then start preparing for the outdoor season.”
“I’ll run for the University of Oregon through the spring into June and then hopefully represent Canada this summer at the Canadian National Championships in Ottawa in July and August, and then the World Championships which I would still have to qualify for in September.”
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