Toronto sprinter breaks Canadian indoor 300m record
Christopher Morales Williams ran 32.47 seconds for 300m, breaking the previous record, which had stood for 16 years
Photo by: Muad Issa (@muadems)Christopher Morales Williams, an up-and-coming sprinter from Toronto, made headlines by breaking the Canadian indoor 300m record at the Clemson Invite in South Carolina on Jan. 13. Morales Williams clocked a speedy 32.47 seconds, breaking the previous record by six one-hundredths of a second.
Morales Williams’s time broke the previous Canadian record of 32.53, set by former World Championship bronze medallist Tyler Christopher in 2008. Morales Williams was three years old when Christopher set the record.
To put his record in perspective Morales Williams averaged a ridiculous 10.8 seconds per 100m and an average speed of almost 35 km/hr. He also edged U.S. sprint star Matthew Boling, placing second in the race.
Morales Williams, 19, is in his second year at the University of Georgia on a track and field scholarship. Last year he won his first Canadian senior championship in the 400m, marking his presence as one of the country’s top young talents in athletics.
Team Canada has not sent any athletes in the men’s 400m to the past two Olympic Games. Morales Williams, who’s currently ranked as one of the top 400m talents in the NCAA, has the opportunity to become the first man to represent Canada at an Olympic Games since Daundre Barnaby at the London Olympics in 2012. Barnaby disappeared while swimming in the ocean in St. Kitts and Nevis on an Athletics Canada training camp in 2015. He was 24.
Morales Williams has a personal best of 45.48 seconds, which was set in the 400m final at the 2023 Canadian Track and Field Championships. The mark he would need to punch his ticket to Paris would be 45.00 seconds or faster.