Brown Runs Season-Best Sprint Times At Icahn Stadium In NYC Weeks After Placing Sixth In 200 At World Championships

By Oliver Hinson of DyeStat

Josh Sawyer Photos

INTERVIEWS

NEW YORK — Brittany Brown may have a difficult time fitting three Tiffany and Co. crowns on her head.

A year after winning the 200 meters at the inaugural ATHLOS meet at Icahn Stadium, Brown came back and pulled off a sprint double, winning the 100 meters and 200 meters in 10.99 seconds and 21.89 seconds, respectively. For her efforts, she earned two silver Tiffany and Co. crowns and $120,000.

Brown credited the atmosphere of the event with helping her achieve victory at the all-women track and field showcase.

“I thrive off of this,” Brown said. “I don’t know, maybe it’s the environment that brings it out of me.”

Brown, who had a laparoscopic surgery over the winter, got a late start to her season. She finished fourth in the 200 at the USA Championships and only qualified for the World Championships after winning the Diamond League Final in August. A year after taking home bronze at the Paris Olympics, she finished a disappointing sixth at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

After those races, Brown’s coach repeatedly told her that she had more left in the tank, even if she didn’t believe it at the time.

“Even though I was doubting myself,” Brown said, “he was like, ‘You’ve still got room.’”

Brown proved her coach right, setting season’s bests in both events and a new personal best in the 200 on Friday.

“It’s nice to have a coach who can see stuff that you can’t see,” Brown said.

Her victory in the 100 was the closest of the two; first-year pro Jacious Sears led through 90 meters and only finished two hundredths back in 11.01 seconds. Kayla White took third in 11.22, solidifying an American sweep of the podium.

In the 200, Brown enjoyed a more comfortable margin, taking the lead going into the straight and winning by over three tenths. Anavia Battle took second in 22.21 seconds, followed by Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith of the Ivory Coast in 22.65.

Elsewhere, Faith Kipyegon earned her second ATHLOS crown, winning the mile in 4:17.78 over Gudaf Tsegay. Like Brown, Kipyegon wanted to end her season with a win after losing to Beatrice Chebet in the 5,000 in Tokyo. 

The world record holder took the race out quickly, going through the first quarter mile in just over 60 seconds. Naturally, she slowed over the next two laps, but she still had enough in the tank to pull away from Tsegay in the final stretch. Tsegay crossed the line second in 4:19.75, well ahead of Nikki Hiltz, who sprinted ahead of the second pack to finish third in 4:32.51.

Hiltz saw Kipyegon and Tsegay sprint to the lead and thought, “No way.”

“It was a really funny race,” Hiltz said. “Gudaf and Faith took off and I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t really feel like going out in 59, 60, so I’m just gonna hang back.’ and then it was a race for third, which was awesome.”

Meanwhile, Masai Russell — in keeping with the overall theme of the night — avenged her own loss at the World Championships and ended her season with a win, taking first place in the 100-meter hurdles.

“I can actually be content going into the offseason now,” Russell said.

In other highlights:

>>> World Championships bronze medalist Keely Hodgkinson won the 800 meters in 1:56.53. Hodgkinson had an extremely abbreviated build-up to Worlds, only racing twice before heading to Tokyo. While some of her competitors were nearing or past their 20th race of the season, she was only on her sixth.

“These last two weeks coming back from Worlds felt really good,” Hodgkinson said. “I was excited to come here, and the atmosphere out there is crazy. It was fun. Really, really fun.”

Fellow Briton Georgia Hunter Bell wasn’t too far behind; she finished second in 1:58.33.

>>> Marileidy Paulino won the 400 meters in 50.07 seconds. Paulino took second at the World Championships behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.

>>> After putting on a show at Thursday’s Times Square long jump qualifier, Tara Davis-Woodhall finished off her winning performance with a jump of 7.13 meters, equivalent to her season’s best.

Davis-Woodhall didn’t stop to talk to the media for long, but she did hold up her phone to show that her $60,000 winnings had already been deposited into her Cashapp. ATHLOS put a major emphasis on not only the size of this year’s prize purse but its immediacy. Although there was no stated connection, that immediacy does provide a stark contrast to the payment struggles that fellow startup league Grand Slam Track faced.

In 2026, ATHLOS will be a women’s-only track league, not a one-off meet. Founder Alexis Ohanian, who is also a co-founder of Reddit, didn’t give many details about what the league will look like, but he said he aims for ATHLOS to be profitable by the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.