Famous author Stephen King once said, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
There may be no better example of this sentiment than track star Abby Steiner.
By the time Steiner started her freshman year at Dublin Coffman High School, she was already the top competitor in the state. While she was undoubtedly born with immense talent, her focus and unwavering dedication to the sport has helped her go on to become a world champion.
Dashing in Dublin
During her early years, Steiner focused on soccer. She began playing the sport at 5 years old and later played on the Ohio Premier Soccer Club and the Coffman girls’ varsity team.
She began running track in eighth grade at John Sells Middle School, where she still holds the school record for the 100m sprint. This was when Steiner found her love for the individual-focused sport.
“You really get out what you put in,” Steiner says. “You are just competing against yourself every single every single day. With track and field, the results are going to show if you do the work.”
Courtesy of Dublin City Schools
As a student at Coffman, she participated in both soccer and track, only missing one soccer season during her junior year due to tearing her ACL, an injury that her high school coach Greg King says she handled with grace and sportsmanship.
“She was never somebody to throw a temper tantrum or anything,” he says. “Her sort of calm (demeanor) and ability to accept what happened and just working from there was really remarkable. I mean, it’s one of the things that has made her such a great athlete.”
During Steiner’s recovery, she worked closely with athletic trainer Selena Budge. This time with Budge proved to influence her more than just athletically.
“She’s just a badass woman,” Steiner says. “She’s amazing and she’s helped me so much just recovering from that injury and becoming the woman I am today.”
Finishing out her high school career, Steiner had collected 16 Division I state meet wins, winning the indoor and outdoor state 200m events all four years, as well as many 55m, 60m, and 100m state race wins. She repeatedly placed top 10 in events at the New Balance Nationals from her sophomore through senior year.
During her senior year in 2018, she broke the state record in the Division I high school girls 100m and 200m dash and still held both titles at the end of the 2023 spring season.
In addition to the support she received on the track, Steiner’s family was also embraced by the community when her sister, Riley, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014.
During a Coffman football game, a crowd of students sported orange ‘Steiner Strong Fight Leukemia’ t-shirts and multiple sports teams raised money for the cause. Riley has since recovered.
“Seeing how Dublin rallied around her and our family really gave me a special insight into the people that I was around and what they would do to help you succeed and be there for you,” Steiner says.
Paving the way
These days Steiner is a hometown hero, keeping her humility even as the people who have seen her grow firsthand praise her unceasingly, as she has brought so much pride to Dublin and the Coffman program.
Courtesy of Dublin City Schools
“It’s really hard to describe how amazing (she is),” King says. “From the first time she won an NCAA title up through being a world champion, just getting to watch and be like, ‘Wow, I coached her.’”
She donates her old spikes to the very track program she went through so students who need them in a pinch or can’t afford to buy their own can have a pair.
“When they find out these were Abby Steiner’s spikes they are just starstruck,” King says. “I had a girl who was like, ‘I don’t want to run in these now coach. Abby Steiner wore these? I don’t want to run in them. She ran in these? These are amazing.’”
Last Spring, Coffman unveiled a mural on the side of its stadium bleachers commemorating Steiner, an event that Steiner says made everything come full circle for her.
“Seeing how I’ve been able to impact younger girls and younger kids, that’s been amazing,” Steiner says. “Hopefully one day (I can) help sponsor meets and try to give back in that type of way but, I think that mural and getting to meet everyone was one of the most special moments.”
Pulling away from the pack
After high school, Steiner began her career as a two-sport student-athlete at the University of Kentucky. She retired from the soccer team after freshman year to focus all her efforts on track.
“I had literally two days of track practice and I was like, ‘I love this so much, I never want to go to soccer again’ and I walked in the coach's office and told him right then and there,” she says.
During her sophomore year, she set a new U.S. collegiate record for the women’s 200m. After missing the outdoor season while recovering from an Achilles injury, she broke that record in 2022 despite her injury, a title she still holds with a time of 21.8 seconds.
That same year, Steiner became a U.S. champion with a time of 21.77 seconds. She achieved all of this along with dozens of other wins and accolades during her college career.
Courtesy of Mollie Steiner
“(When you recover from an injury) you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure if I’m going to be the same athlete when I come back.’ And I think that race really just solidified for me that I was back and I was ready to have a really good year,” Steiner says.
Soon after college graduation, Steiner placed fifth at the world championships in 2023, and won gold with her 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams.
Her U.S. championship time led to a $2 million sponsorship from PUMA. It was the largest contract ever signed by a female track athlete out of college.
Last fall, Steiner underwent surgery on both of her feet, which delayed her training by roughly two months. She currently is working on building up strength, training with her former collegiate coach at the University of South Carolina for the Olympic trials starting on June 21.
This journey hasn’t been easy for Steiner, but it has led her to compete on the world stage and earned her the opportunity to compete for a spot on Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
“Coming out of the other side of that [injury], I feel like gave me a really big perspective on just focusing on all the little day-to-day details, and one day you’ll look back and realize how far you came from where you started,” she says.
Maisie Fitzmaurice is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at mfitzmaurice@cityscenemediagroup.com.
