Batten hits her stride
on way to the Olympics

By Larry Keough
FSU Communications Group

Kim Batten may be Tallahassee's best-kept secret - at least until the Olympic Games this summer.
The accomplishments of Batten, a former FSU track star and now the world record holder of the women's 400-meter hurdles, rarely show up on the sports pages.

FSU head track coach Terry Long tells Batten: "Everybody in Tallahassee would know you if you had rushed for 2,000 yards in a football season, but you're just the world-record holder and the best ever in the history of the 400-meter hurdles."

Batten's life in Tallahassee has changed little since she set the world record at 52.61 seconds in Goteborg, Sweden, last August and subsequently won ESPN's ESPY Award as the 1995 Women's Track and Field Athlete of the Year. She still trains at Florida State's Mike Long Track.

Anonymity has helped her train, her coach says.

"In Tallahassee, Kim doesn't have to worry about outside distractions that could potentially impede her training and overall performance," says Long, an FSU school-record hurdler in the 1960s and one of the top hurdles coaches.

Yet in Europe, Batten is surrounded by autograph seekers, sports writers and photographers.
Batten says her obscurity at home reflects Americans' insatiable appetite for football and basketball and disdain for non-revenue collegiate sports.

Because U.S. track athletes are little known at home, she says, they are less likely than Europeans to win corporate sponsorships that allow them to train full time.

It was only after Batten's record-setting performance that Oakley sunglasses offered her a contract and Reebok renegotiated her existing contract.

"What this translates to is a short list of American track athletes having the financial wherewithal to train and remain competitive once their collegiate eligibility has expired," Batten says.

Batten, 26, believes her best years are ahead. She hit her stride in 1995, combining raw speed, endurance and leg strength to emerge as the top 400-meter hurdler at the 1995 USA Championships, Pan American Games and the World Championships. At the World Championships, she edged fellow American Tonja Buford by 1/100th of a second as both women beat the earlier world record.

"I leaned my head over the finish line and Tonja didn't," Batten says. "That was the difference."
Now Batten is preparing for the U.S. Olympic trials in June, where she will need at least a third-place finish to compete for the gold in August. She has painful memories of the '92 Olympic trials, where she was told to discontinue her victory lap when timekeepers discovered she had missed a third-place finish by 0.02 seconds.

Her competition will include Buford, Sandra Farmer-Patrick and Sonja Williams, a University of Illinois senior with the fifth-fastest time by a collegian.

"I have my work cut out for me," Batten says. "No one will give me true respect until I make the Olympic team and beat Sally Gunnell in head-to-head competition."

Long believes Batten is ready to dominate the sport. She's always had natural ability, he says, but now she has the mental toughness and drive to be the best.

When she accepted her ESPY, Batten thanked Long. "He not only is my coach, but my best friend and mentor in life," she told a national TV audience.

Long says he and Batten developed a special coach-athlete relationship because she was willing to heed his advice and make the sacrifices to be successful.

"I tend to go beyond the bounds of traditional coaching for athletes who truly want to better themselves," Long says. "Kim is certainly one of those athletes."