Britton Wilson is Ready for the Physical and Mental Challenges of a Historic NCAA Track & Field Double

Britton Wilson looks on ahead of competing in the women's 400-meter hurdles heats during the 2022 World Athletics Championships on July 19, 2022 in Eugene, Oregon.

It’s been a busy season for Britton Wilson. So busy, in fact, that the University of Arkansas junior hasn’t had a chance to process the fact that she is now the fourth fastest American 400-meter runner of all time.

On May 13, she clocked 49.13 seconds to win the Southeastern Conference championships, which vaulted her up the list – one spot ahead of 11-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix – but she barely had a chance to dwell on the magnitude of her performance before stepping back onto the track to run the 400-meter hurdles.

She won that hurdles race, and then repeated the same demanding double two weeks later at the NCAA West Regional meet, qualifying for this week’s NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Austin, Texas. She is looking to become the first athlete to win both the 400 and 400 hurdles in NCAA history.

Wilson enters the meet as the favorite in both events. Her 49.13 clocking in the 400 trails only Sanya Richards-Ross (48.70), Valerie Brisco-Hooks (48.83) and Chandra Cheeseborough (49.05) – all Olympic gold medalists – on the U.S. all-time list. Wilson is now one spot ahead of the recently retired Felix (49.26), who won 14 world championships gold medals in her career, including the 2015 title in the 400.

“It’s very strange because I look up to the people on the all-time list and I’ve seen them since I was little, and now I’m on the all-time list,” Wilson says with genuine astonishment. “It’s crazy, but it’s very rewarding. It’ll probably hit me later on when the season is done.”

In the 400 hurdles, her personal best of 53.08 (set last year) makes her the 10th fastest American in history.

Though she has dominated both events against collegians this year, the biggest challenge is the short turnaround between races. At the regional meet, she had roughly 35 minutes between the two events, barely enough time to get a quick massage, refuel and settle back into the starting blocks. At the NCAA finals on Saturday, June 10, the two races are separated by a mere 25 minutes.

Despite the limited recovery time, Wilson has put in the work to manage the challenge, as she demonstrated by looking comfortable at both the SEC and NCAA West meets.

“Our training has always been high intensity with a mixture of both endurance and speed,” she said regarding the regimen of Razorbacks associate head coach Chris Johnson. “So, I think now we’re really fine-tuning everything. We were already doing the work.

“And it was more of a mental thing: ‘Can you do the double? Do you think you can do it, because if you think you can do it, then do it.’”

Britton Wilson competes in the women's 400-meter hurdles heats during the 20222 World Athletics Championships on July 19, 2022 in Eugene, Oregon.

On paper, there is little doubt that she can do it. Wilson won the 400 at the NCAA indoor championships in March, setting an American indoor record of 49.48. And she’s the defending NCAA champion in the 400 hurdles.

While the 400-400 hurdles combination is obviously a physically demanding double, the psychological pressure is equally intense. But the 22-year-old Wilson has worked as hard on her mental preparation as she has on her sprinting and hurdling.

“It definitely did take a lot of work, mentally, because I am generally a nervous person,” said the Henrico, Virginia, native. “I get anxious very easily. Being able to handle my nerves pre-race and any self-doubt and all the thoughts running through my head has taken a lot of practice and just getting used to feeling confident in my ability and myself and not have those thoughts.”

She certainly has plenty to feel confident about. Since transferring from Tennessee to Arkansas following the 2021 season, Wilson has established herself as one of the top collegiate athletes – and a budding international star. Last year, two weeks after taking the NCAA title in the 400 hurdles, she finished second at the USA Outdoor Championships to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who set a world record. From there, Wilson represented Team USA at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, finishing fifth (in another race won by McLaughlin-Levrone in world-record time). She came back two days later to run a leg on the gold-medal-winning 4x400 team.

Still, despite those credentials, Wilson admits that negative thoughts can still pop up. She credits Johnson (who will become the Razorbacks women’s head coach next season) for guiding her to an optimistic attitude.

“He’s definitely been holding me accountable on my mindset,” she says. “If I say something negative, he asks me to say something positive first. It has become more of a habit to be more positive because Coach doesn’t want me to dwell on the negative. He wants me to focus on what I can do better instead of what went wrong.”

Right now, very little seems to be going wrong. After the NCAAs, Wilson will compete at the USA Outdoor Championships (July 6-9 in Eugene), where she will focus on one event, with an eye toward earning a spot on Team USA for the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, in August.

And despite having some collegiate eligibility remaining, Wilson plans to sign a professional contract sometime this summer. She’s already been approached by sponsors.

“It feels unreal because this has been a goal of mine since high school,” she says. “It’s nice to have companies and agencies calling and asking for me.”

She plans to hear them all out but admits that some companies might already have an edge.

“I’ve been seeing the uniforms on Instagram and I’m like, ‘Oooh, I’d be cute in that,’” she said with a laugh, joking the surest way to get her to sign a contract is “get cute uniforms!”

Rich Sands is a New York City-based freelance editor and writer and has been a correspondent for Track & Field News since 1995, covering the sport at the high school, college and professional levels. He was previously an editor at TV Guide Magazine, overseeing the magazine's Olympic coverage.