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While competing at the U.S. Championships in Des Moines, Iowa last month – where she took second in the 1,500-meter race to qualify for the international event – Cain was the subject of a national feature that was published in Sports Illustrated.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden chronicled the rapid ascent of the capricious 17-year-old long distance runner, from her 5:47 mile in the fifth-grade to her time with former Bronxville High School boys track coach Ed Stickles and training with running guru Alberto Salazar.
Cain, who is the youngest U.S. athlete to make a team in worlds competition since the event began in 1983, was called the “most precocious female middle-distance runner in U.S. history” for her age-appropriate antics off the track.
“[Cain] is caught for now in a giddy limbo, with one foot stretching into a very adult athletic and media world that stands poised to heave a huge slab of the sport’s future across her slender shoulders, and one foot hanging back in Bronxville High where her friends will chide her for taking only two AP classes next year,” Layden wrote.
The story details Cain’s incredible run in both indoor and outdoor track. She has set junior and high school records in six events at distances ranging from 800 to 5,000-meters, and is already considered among the best in the world, finishing second to training partner Treniere Moser, 31, in Iowa.
Layden concludes by saying that while it won’t be easy for Cain to continue her record-setting pace, but she has the right team behind her, from Salazar to renowned sports psychologists who are working with her while she trains. The high school senior is expected to compete once more, in London this month before the championships in Moscow.
“I’m not one of those people who is scared, like ‘oh, I’m going to burn out,’” Cain said in the article. “And even if this is the best year I ever have in my life, I’ve experienced a hell of a lot, but I don’t believe that’s what this is. I’m surrounded by people who know what they’re doing. I know I’m not done and I’m not meant to be done.”
Read the full Sports Illustrated article here.
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