After last year’s Games, when he won silver for the second year in a row, he looked inwardly without ego and knew he had to improve his running. So, he did what few athletes would have the humility to do—he reached out to the local high school track coach and asked if he could practice with the team a few nights a week. Then he got his ass handed to him two nights a week for six months. “Everything you’re supposed to be doing during sprinting, I was doing the exact opposite,” Mat told me. “My technique was terrible.”
