Leroy Burrell
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| Nationality | American | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
February 21, 1967 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
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| Residence | Houston, Texas, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 180 lb (82 kg) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Running | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Event(s) | 100 metres, 200 metres | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| College team | University of Houston | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Leroy Russel Burrell (born February 21, 1967) is an American former track and field athlete, who twice set the world record for the 100 m sprint, setting a time of 9.90 seconds in June 1991. This was broken by Carl Lewis in September at the World Track and Field Championships. In that race, Burrell came in second, yet he beat his own record. Burrell set the record for a second time when he ran 9.85 sec in July 1994, a record that stood until the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when Donovan Bailey ran 9.84 ssec.
Burrell grew up in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, and attended Penn Wood High School, where he single-handedly won the state championship by winning the 100 m, 200 m, long jump, and triple jump. Suffering from poor eyesight accentuated by a childhood eye injury, he was poor at other sports, but excelled on the track from an early age.
He studied at the University of Houston, where he was a successful participant in its track program. In 1985–86, Burrell broke Houston's freshman long jump record that was held by Carl Lewis, when he leaped 26 feet 9 inches at a dual meet against UCLA in 1986. Later that season, he faced one of the most challenging moments of his track career.
After jumping 26' 7.25" (8.11 m) in the preliminaries of the 1986 Southwest Conference Outdoor Championships, Burrell jumped almost 27 feet (8.23 m) before landing awkwardly on his third jump. He tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. He finished second at the meet, but many people feared the injury could be career-ending.
In 1988, he returned to the SWC Championships, where he finished second in the 100 m and third in the long jump. At the NCAA Championships, Burrell earned All-America honors with a fifth-place finish in the 100 m and a seventh-place showing in the long jump.
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