Leroy Russel Burrell (born February 21, 1967) is an American former

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

athlete, who twice set the

world record A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity. The book ''Guinness World Records'' and other world records organizatio ...

for the 100 m sprint.

Early life

Burrell grew up in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, and attended Penn Wood High School, where he single-handedly won the state championship by winning the 100 m, 200 m,

long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

, and

triple jump The triple jump, sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or the hop, skip and jump, is a track and field event, similar to long jump. As a group, the two events are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". The competitor runs down the tr ...

. Suffering from poor eyesight accentuated by a childhood eye injury, he was poor at other sports, but excelled on the track from an early age. He attended the

University of Houston The University of Houston (; ) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas, United States. It was established in 1927 as Houston Junior College, a coeducational institution and one of multiple junior colleges formed in ...

from 1986 to 1990, where he was a nine-time

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

All-American and set the NCAA outdoor record in the long jump.

Professional career

Burrell was plagued by injuries and bad luck throughout his career, particularly around major championships. He won

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

in the 100 m ahead of Carl Lewis at the 1990

Goodwill Games The Goodwill Games were an international sports competition created by Ted Turner in reaction to the political troubles surrounding the Olympic Games of the 1980s. In 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the United States and other ...

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. He won the

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

in the 100 m behind Lewis at the 1991 World Championships. At the

1992 Summer Olympics The 1992 Summer Olympics (, ), officially the Games of the XXV Olympiad (, ) and officially branded as Barcelona '92, were an international multi-sport event held from 25 July to 9 August 1992 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Beginning in 1994 ...

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, Burrell false-started in the 100 m final. When the race finally restarted, his reaction off the line was slow, and he finished fifth. He did manage to win a

relay A relay Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off A relay is an electrically operated switc ...

gold as part of the U.S. 4 × 100 m team. On May 19, 1990, Burrell ran a wind-assisted 200 m at College Station, Texas, in a time of 19.61 seconds. The wind speed was +4.0 m per second. This was the fastest time for the 200 m for over six years until the 1996 Olympic final in Atlanta, where Michael Johnson ran 19.32 seconds. He first set the 100 m world record in June 1991 with a time of 9.90 seconds. This was broken that September by Carl Lewis who ran 9.86 sec at the 1991 World Track and Field Championships where Burrell finished second in a new personal best time of 9.88 sec. In July 1994, Burrell set the world record for the second time when he ran 9.85 sec (a record that stood until the

1996 Olympics The 1996 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXVI Olympiad, also known as Atlanta 1996 and commonly referred to as the Centennial Olympic Games) were an international multi-sport event held from July 19 to August 4, 1996, in Atlanta, ...

when Donovan Bailey ran 9.84 sec). Since his

retirement Retirement is the withdrawal from one's position or occupation or from one's active working life. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours or workload. Many people choose to retire when they are elderly or incapable of doing their j ...

in 1998, Burrell has replaced his old college mentor, Tom Tellez, as coach of the University of Houston's track and field team. Burrell has led UH to 14 men's

Conference USA Conference USA (CUSA) is a collegiate athletic conference of member institutions in the Southern and Western United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I in all sports. CUSA's offices are located in Dallas, Texas. Mem ...

titles (nine indoor, five outdoor) and nine women's titles (four indoor, five outdoor). He was inducted into the Texas Track and Field Coaches Hall of Fame in 2014. In June 2022, Burrell stepped down as head coach at Houston and accepted the head coaching position for Auburn track and field.

Personal life

Burrell married Michelle Finn, also a sprinter, in 1994, and they have three sons together: Cameron who was a sprinter for the Houston Cougars and died in 2021, Joshua, and Jaden. On June 7, 2017, Cameron joined his father in the sub-10 second club. Burrell's younger sister

Dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the diffuse sky radiation, appearance of indirect sunlight being Rayleigh scattering, scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc ha ...

also competed in track and field at the highest level, as a member of the 2000 US Olympic team and world indoor champion in the long jump.Burrell strikes gold

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(2001-03-10). Retrieved on 2011-01-05.

Statistics

Information from

IAAF World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation and International Association of Athletics Federations and formerly abbreviated as the IAAF, is the international sports governing body, governing body for the sport ...

profile unless otherwise noted.

World records

Includes former all-conditions world best in the 200 meters. All world records are former as of May 24, 2014.

Personal bests

Sprints

Jumps

International championship results

National championship results

Circuit wins

Overall

* IAAF Grand Prix:

1990 Important events of 1990 include the Reunification of Germany and the unification of Yemen, the formal beginning of the Human Genome Project (finished in 2003), the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the separation of Namibia from South ...

100 meters

* IAAF Grand Prix:

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Notes

References

External links

*
Leroy Burrell
hall of fame bio at

USATF USA Track & Field (USATF) is a United States national governing body for the sports of track and field, cross country running, road running, and racewalking (known as the sport of athletics outside the US). The USATF was known between 1979 and 1 ...

Leroy Burrell
bio at the Houston Cougars

Videos

Carl Lewis & friends: The fantastic four in Barcelona 1992
by the

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via

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burrell, Leroy 1967 births Living people Sportspeople from Delaware County, Pennsylvania People from Lansdowne, Pennsylvania Track and field athletes from Philadelphia American male sprinters American male long jumpers African-American track and field athletes World record setters in athletics (track and field) Olympic gold medalists for the United States in track and field Athletes (track and field) at the 1992 Summer Olympics World Athletics Championships medalists World Athletics Championships athletes for the United States Houston Cougars men's track and field athletes Houston Cougars track and field coaches Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics Goodwill Games medalists in athletics USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships winners USA Indoor Track and Field Championships winners World Athletics Championships winners Competitors at the 1990 Goodwill Games Competitors at the 1994 Goodwill Games 21st-century African-American sportsmen 21st-century American sportsmen 20th-century African-American sportsmen 20th-century American sportsmen NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships winners NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships winners