Steven Solomon

Solomon was born in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse, New South Wales, Australia, and is Jewish.[2][3][4][5] His local rabbi is Levi Wolff, a Chabadnik who runs Sydney, Australia’s largest Orthodox congregation, Central Synagogue.[6] His father, Michael, is a South African-born orthopedic surgeon, and his mother is Lucille Solomon.[3][7] He has a younger sister, Bianca.[7]

Solomon was raised in East Lindfield and attended Lindfield East Public School and Cranbrook School, Sydney.[7] Solomon planned to follow his father into medicine after accepting an athletic scholarship in track at Stanford University.[3][6] At Stanford, he studied Human Biology, and graduated in 2017.[3][8] He is attending Duke University in 2017-18 to study for a Masters in Management Studies (MMS) at the Fuqua School of Business.[9]

Solomon first began formal track training in 2009, and that year he won the Under-17 All-Schools Championship in the 400m.[3][10] Solomon competed for Australia in the Maccabiah Games, the "Jewish Olympics", as captain of the junior soccer team at the 2009 Maccabiah Games.[5][11] He was named the 2009 Maccabi New South Wales Junior Sportsman of the Year.[3]

After breaking the 30-year-old national junior record in the 400m in 2011, Solomon was part of the Australian squad in the 4 × 400 metres relay at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics.[12] He won the 2011 Australia National Championship in the 400m at 17 years of age.[3][7] In September 2011, he suffered a hamstring tear.[7] He was named the Maccabi New South Wales Sportsman of the Year in 2011.[3]

At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London at the age of 19, he competed in the finals of the Men's 400 m race, placing eighth with a time of 45.14, after running a time of 44.97 in the semifinals.[3] Two and a half years prior, Solomon had never run a 400m race.[13] He was the first Australian man in 24 years to reach the 400m final at the Olympics.[9] He also ran on Australia's 4x400 relay team that ran 3:03.17 in the first round, and did not advance to the final.[3] He won the 2012 Australia National Championship in the 400m in a time of 45.54, despite his hamstring injury.[3][9][6] At the 2012 IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain, he won a bronze medal in the 400m as he set a personal record of 45.52.[3][10] He was awarded the 2012 Richard Coombes Memorial Award for Most Outstanding Male Athlete.[14]

Solomon competed for Australia again as captain of the junior soccer team at the 2013 Maccabiah Games.[5][11] At those Games he also competed in track, and won a silver medal in the 400m race, with a time of 46.24.[15][3] At the 2013 Morton Games in Dublin, Ireland, he came in third with a time of 46.18.[3] At the 2013 World Championships in Athletics in Moscow, Russia, returning from a back injury he led off for the Australia 4 x 400 relay team, running a split of 45.3, as the team finished eighth in the final with a time of 3:02.26.[3][16] At Stanford in 2013, he established a new freshman record in the 400 with a 46.12 (No. 3 on the school's all-time list), and was named a second-team All-American.[3] He was also named the top junior sprinter for 2013 at the NSW Athletics’ awards, and the Maccabi Australia Outstanding Jewish Sportsman of the Year.[14][17]

In 2014, he set a new Stanford record in the outdoor 400m while winning the Australian national championship, running 45.36, and also finished second at the Pac-12 Championships in a time of 45.79.[3][9] Running indoors for Stanford, Solomon ran a 45.75 split in the 400 medley relay at the 2014 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships (as the Cardinal won the title in 9:37.63), and also won the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) title in the 400 in 46.24, and ran a 500 in 1:01.44 (the third-fastest time in the world to that point).[3] He was injured, as a back problem turned into a chronic hamstring injury and then a torn hamstring in the 400m semifinal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games that necessitated surgery after the Games, and he therefore only competed for Stanford for two years.[9][1][18]

Solomon missed the qualifying time to represent Australia at the 2016 Olympic Games by milliseconds.[19] The cut-off was 45.40, and he missed it by one-10th of a second.[20]

In April 2017, Solomon won a record-tying fifth Australian National Championship in the 400m, in a time of 46.66 in wet conditions.[9][8][19] At the June 2017 TrackTown Summer Series 400m race he ran a time of 45.19, his fastest race since the 2012 Olympic final, thereby qualifying for the 2017 World Championships in Athletics in London.[9][1]

As a graduate student at Duke University in 2017-18, he is finishing his final year of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletic eligibility with the Duke Blue Devils track & field team.[9] In January 2018 he set a new personal record in the indoor 800m with a time of 1:52.09, and in February 2018 he set new personal records in the indoor 400m with a time of 45.44 (setting a new Australian record, and breaking the all-time Duke University indoor record for that distance as well as the ACC record), and in the 600m with a time of 1:17.49 (breaking the Duke record).[21][22][23] He finished the season as first team All-ACC, and a second team All-American.[24][22]

At age 26, he was an Australian Athletics Team co-captain,[25] stating at the end of 2019 that he was aiming to medal at the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.[25][26] In October 2019, "London Olympics finalist Steve Solomon did just enough to claim a spot in the men’s 400m semi-finals," getting the last of the available qualifying berths when he finished fourth in his first heat.[27] He was training isolation in May 2020.[28] He was heading the Australian team in September 2019 from their training base in Italy.[29]

After the Olympics were postponed, he said in July 2020 that he had returned to proper competitive training.[30] Solomon on August 29, 2020 had an op-ed in The Guardian published, where he stated it was "heartbreaking" that Covid-19 was leaving athletes unable to compete in the Olympics as planned.[31] In 2020, his coach remained Penny Gillies, a former 100m Olympic hurdler.[32]

• List of select Jewish track and field athletes

• Steven Solomon on Twitter
• Steven Solomon website
• Steven Solomon at World Athletics
• Stanford Cardinal bio
• Randwick Botany Harriers bio