Penn track star headed to Junior Worlds

Quakers 800-meter runner will compete in Sydney, Australia A year ago, no one would have predicted that Robin Martin would be on his way to the World Junior Championships. Not even Robin Martin. "I wasn't that good coming out of high school, but the coaches had a lot of faith in me," Martin said. "This is nothing I expected to do a year ago today." Martin, a Penn sophomore, will be wearing the red, white and blue when he competes in the 800-meter run in Sydney, Australia. He will be one of two United States runners competing in the 800-meter event which will take place in three rounds August 20-26 and include the world's best track athletes aged 19 and under. "My goal is to make it to the finals, but that's a lofty goal," Martin said. "An American hasn't made it to the final in a long time." Martin has known about his trip Down Under since June 28 when he placed second in the nation in the 800 at the U.S. Junior Championships. The top two runners in each event advance to the World Junior Championships. Martin raced to the finish line in a personal record time of 1 minute, 49.61 seconds. "I didn't know what to expect going into it," Martin said. "I was really happy with second place." Robert True of the University of Illinois will be joining Martin as the other U.S. representative in the 800. True beat Martin by just over 3 tenths of a second in a time of 1:49.3. After a productive freshman year on the Penn track team, Martin largely attributes his continuing success to his coaches and teammates. Indeed, he was not one of the nation's best runners as a high school athlete, but he has improved steadily throughout his freshman year. "He was a decent prospect coming in," junior distance runner Ross Albert said. "Coach Powell always said he was going to be really good and he turned out to be right. It's a matter of good coaching on Coach Powell's part and hard work on Robin's part." "There's good coaching here," junior sprinter Kael Coleman agreed. "He's a really hard worker and he just came into his own in college." "He's obviously the one that did it, but he's had the support of the team all year," Penn assistant coach Matt Levine said. "He's representing the U.S. down there, but he's representing the [Penn] program and the level at which we want the program to compete." Martin has improved from a decent high school runner to one of top young middle distance prospects in the country during his first year of college. He's improved his time by 6 seconds since high school and become a strong contributing member of the Penn middle distance squad. He has gained a spot on Penn's No. 1 4x400 meter relay team and was the 1996 Outdoor Heptagonal champion in the 800. "I'm very happy with the way my first year went and I'm very happy with my decision to come to Penn," Martin said. "It's been great academically and athletically. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. There's no other team I'd rather be on than Penn's team." As Martin thinks about his next three years of college, he can't help but think about the next major world competition that will be in Sydney after he graduates -- the 2000 Olympics. "It's always a dream I had as a kid," Martin said when asked about the Sydney Olympics, "but it never seemed remotely possible until some of the success I've been having this year. Hopefully I'll be back [to Sydney]." And if he continues at the pace he's going now, there's a good chance he will.