A man who challenged Division 1 track and field athlete Alahna Sabbakhan to a foot race was swiftly defeated in a viral video that illustrates why female athletes should never be underestimated.
The University of Virginia runner raced a friend of her boyfriend’s who “refused to believe that a woman could beat him in a race,” as she explained in the video, shared Dec. 17 with more than one million likes.
During the first half of the 400-meter race, she kept pace with her challenger, who “does not run” regularly, she said in the video. But after the first 200 meters passed, she picked up the pace to “finish hard, because that’s what you do as a track runner.”
In the clip, she surges to the lead, as the man who challenged her quickly falls behind.
Sabbakhan, 22, tells TODAY.com that when she first heard murmurings that her boyfriend’s friend thought he could outrun her, she found it “ridiculous.” But when she was already set to work out at a nearby track, she asked if he wanted to join.
“He didn’t really know what to challenge me in,” she says. “He was like, ‘Yeah, I could beat her in the 400’ — not realizing that that was one of the hardest track events and that was one of my secondary events.”
The challenger ended up bringing his parents and friends to the track for the event. She says the outcome of the race was predictable early on once the group saw her warm up, which typically consists of drills and running a mile.
“He just kind of showed up,” she says. “I don’t know what he was expecting.”
The race actually occurred nearly a year ago, in January 2023, Sabbakhan says. But she stumbled upon the video recently and thought it was perfect for her growing TikTok page, where she posts exercise, diet and day-in-the-life content for her more than 12,000 followers.
Sabbakhan, whose main event is the 800-meter race, finished the 400m in 57 seconds, which was “pretty good for practice,”…
Read the full article here
