16-Year-Old Sprints Right Into Professional Track

By LINDSAY CROUSE (DEC. 17, 2015)

ATLANTA — When Candace Hill became the fastest teenage girl the United States has ever produced, sprinting 100 meters in 10.98 seconds in June, she was suddenly good enough not only to qualify for next summer’s Rio Olympics, but to potentially win a medal there. Now, at age 16, she has become the youngest track athlete in the United States to turn professional.

Hill is the latest in a recent wave of talented young runners — all females — to join the professional athlete ranks while still in high school, going straight to salaried racing and leapfrogging the traditional step of collegiate competition. This is a path that not even Olympic gold medalists like Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee or Edwin Moses took.