Dogs are wonderful creatures, though their understanding of boundaries is not especially well-developed, as evidenced by this trespassing pooch, who shamelessly crashed a Utah track meet last Saturday. The lovable interloper you see below is Holly, who, in what will go down as one of the great track upsets of all-time, beat Logan High School’s Gracie Lacey to the line, crossing the finishing tape in a blistering 10.5 seconds. Though Holly’s heroics won’t count in any official capacity—joining a relay mid-event is grounds for immediate disqualification, not to mention the litany of uniform and lane violations she committed—footage of the race quickly went viral, garnering over a million views on Twitter and another 90,000+ on YouTube.
According to Mike Stunson of the Sacramento Bee, Holly belongs to Kate Heywood, a junior at Murray High School who was also competing in Saturday’s Grizzly Invitational at Logan High. Heywood was warming up for another event when Holly decided to hijack the final leg of the 4 by 200-meter relay, staging a remarkable comeback down the backstretch.
Obviously, last year’s high-school track National Championships were scrapped due to COVID, but the men’s 100-meter dash the year prior was won by Joseph Fahnbulleh, a senior from Hopkins, Minnesota (he’s since matriculated to the University of Florida), in a wind-aided time of 10.35. Gavin Schurr of Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado owns the nation’s current fastest time in the 100 meters, blazing a 10.36 at last month’s NSAF Meet of Champions in Myrtle Beach. So essentially, a canine with no prior track experience (beyond jogging around the neighborhood with Heywood) ran a time comparable to the country’s top sprinters.
Lacey, who ran the winning leg for Logan High, was embarrassed to have lost to a dog, but there’s no shame in losing to the four-legged equivalent of Usain Bolt. Can we get Holly an endorsement deal with Nike … and maybe a leash while we’re at it?
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