Is Matthew Boling Overrated?

He is a fantatstic athlete , but if we look at the definition of the word "overrated", right now, he somewhat fits it.

I think it comes along with his "HS kid" tag

Somebody mentioned Kyriu in this thread, Kyriu left high school at 17 (he was born in December).

The US high schoool leader from last year (Anthony Schwartz) is competing (struggling) this year as a true college freshman while being 3 months younger than Boling. How is it possible ?

This is the reason why IAAF uses YEAR of birth in order to rank youth athletics performances. Boling turns 19 this year so he is basically an U20 athlete in his last year of competition as an age-grouper (which is not typical for HSer).

The IAAF maintains a thorough all-time list of age-group performances:

He is joint #41th (US joint #19th) in 100m, joint #119 (US #joint 56th) in 200m and joint #78 (US #17th) in the long jump. In the the 400m , his relay split worthes a 45.4 which would mean around joint #70 (US 35th -40th).

It is not that his level of performance is not noteworthy, it is that it does not matches the hype (which is reserved generally for performances "never-seen-before"), even domestically, when you look at the all time junior rankings posted above.

People said that his race played a role in the media frenzy, this is partly true, because

from an american POV, Zach Shinnick (born in 1999) ran 20"58, 45"2 at the same stage of his life only two years ago, but it went unnoticed because he did it in college while being a true freshman, in an era where college athletes are running 43 high to 44 low. From a global POV, guys like Lemaitre or Gemili were quite a bit faster in the 100m the year they turned 19, while not looking remotely as fit as him, all these guys were however out of "High School".

Of course that would be hypocritical to only mention him, for that, the current HS record holder Trentavis Friday was obviously held back , but I don't remember the level of media hype about him despite achieving higher success as an HSer (and when you look at his career, it was probably justified).

I think , the hype is mainly due to the increased visibility that he has by doing his feats in HS while being a college freshman.

In college, his times would still be damn fast, but they would not stand out as much and it would only be noted by T&F aficionados...

A white kid who can run a sub10.00w, 10.13, long jump over 26 feet and split a sub 45.00 in HS is pretty impressive, so, no the kid isn't over rated.

The combination of abilities is what is most ....wow!

Most have forgotten about Frank Lombardi, Francis Hussey, Forest Beatty, when it comes to white HS sprinters and they have also forgotten about Houston McTear, Dwayne Evans, Johnny Jones when it comes to HS sprinters who shocked, Hell, the first female to win the Olympic 100m was the 16 year old Betty Robinson.

I do expect to see Boling become more 200m at Georgia, he has speed/400 endurance and most white sprinters do better at 200m than the 100m,

the most professional, insightful and sophisticated analysis of the Matt Boling phenomenon so far