By John Frierson
Staff Writer

After running the fastest indoor 400 meters of his young life — and one of the fastest ever run by anyone — Jonathan Simms emphatically clapped his hands three times. And that was pretty much the extent of his on-track celebration. 

The Georgia freshman sprinter, in his first collegiate meet at the Clemson Invitational on Jan. 11, had broken the Under-20 world record with a time of 44.62 seconds. That’s the fourth-fastest indoor 400 ever.

“I felt like with the training that we’ve been putting in, it was feasible, that it wasn’t impossible, but I was surprised to open up that well,” said the 6-foot-4 Simms, from Allen, Texas. “Honestly, I can thank (Georgia associate head coach Karim Abdel Wahab‘s) training, because the race plan that he gave me and the workouts that he’s been giving me, I just ran it just like how he said, and it turned out really well.”

As fast as Simms’ 400 was — again, fourth-fastest in history — it still ranks No. 2 all-time at Georgia. Simms’ training partner, former Bulldog and 2024 NCAA Indoor and Outdoor champion Christopher Morales-Williams, has the program record, and unofficial world record, of 44.49, set at the 2024 SEC Championships. (Morales-Williams’ time would have been an official world record if a piece of monitoring equipment required by World Athletics had been used that day at Arkansas’ Randal Tyson Track Center.)

“They call it the formula of success in athletics, when talent and hard work meet opportunity,” Abdel Wahab said. “Part of his talent is also his comprehension — physical talent and mental talent — and then hard work and discipline meet opportunity.

“Opportunity means, in my opinion, being here with us in Georgia, because we have experience doing this, especially in his event. He’s training with the person who ran the fastest time in world history. Our school record is the fastest time in world history, right? So it’s insane that he ran a 44.62 and ended up not breaking the school record, nor the NCAA record. I told him, ‘If you want to break the school record, you have to break the world record.'”

Simms runs with some of the fastest 400 sprinters in the world at practice. Along with Morales-Williams, a 2024 Olympian for Canada, there is Will Floyd, a junior who won the NCAA Indoor 400 last year and was part of the 4×400 NCAA Indoor title team, as well as another former Bulldog, Elija Godwin, who won the 2023 NCAA Indoor 400 and won a bronze medal at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo as a member of the mixed 4×400 relay team.

“There is no lack of wisdom or experience amongst his training partners,” Abdel Wahab said. “Forget about the coach, just look at who he’s around. … I feel like he really values training with those guys. It’s like an accelerator to his development.”

After his opening meet, Simms was named both the SEC Men’s Runner of the Week and the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Men’s Athlete of the Week. At the Clemson meet, he also ran in the 4×400 relay, clocking a time of 44.35 to help the Bulldog quartet place second.

“I just tried to cross the line as soon as possible,” he said of his 400 win. “I saw 44 on the clock, and I was like, okay, that’s pretty good.”

Simms’ fast start isn’t a surprise. After all, he was the 2025 USATF National Junior Olympic champion in the 400 and the USA U20 champion in the event.

“I knew that he’s capable of doing something like that, but I didn’t know when,” Abdel Wahab said. “It was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when. But I knew his freshman year was going to be special.”

Running one of the fastest 400s ever in his first meet might lead to heightened goals or a change in perspective, but Simms is taking it all in stride. It’s the first step in a long journey, he said.

“I don’t think it changes anything,” he said. “I feel like God put me here for a reason, so whether I perform poorly or I perform well, I feel like either way, I still have to keep working hard. I’ve got a full season ahead of me.”

As impressive as Simms’ results on the track are — his 400 at Clemson remains the fastest indoor 400 in the world so far this year — his mind is just as sharp. He’s planning on majoring in Mechanical Engineering, with the goal of maybe one day working in the aviation or aerospace fields. He might even try to work for NASA one day.

“I don’t have a specific destination I want to be at right now, because I’m still going through the process with the classes and stuff,” he said. “I know that an engineering degree can get you in a wide variety of opportunities.”

So can running the 400 at a world-class level, especially with the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles coming up pretty fast.

“That’s always the goal, but it starts now. I’m just taking small goals, going one step at a time,” he said. 

According to Simms, his father, Daryl, told him when he was young that he would be an Olympian one day.

“I think I was eight, or maybe seven, and I’d never run track at this point, and he said I could go to the Olympics,” Simms said with a smile. “I thought he meant that we were going to the Olympics that summer, and the next thing I know, he put me on a summer track team. Ever since then, it’s been a goal of mine.”

Simms wasn’t the only impressive newcomer in Georgia’s season-opening meet. Six of the 14 performances by Georgia men and women that were among the top 10 in program history were notched by freshmen. Another sprinter, Sidi Njie, won the 300-meter dash in his first collegiate race with a time of 32.10, the second-fastest time in collegiate history.

Simms and many of the Bulldogs will be back in action this weekend at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Invitational in Albuquerque, N.M. 

 

Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files.