Alex Young’s Olympic dreams included a stay with coach Amin Nikfar in Chapel Hill

Alex Young walked into Gardner-Webb’s football offices and plopped down a collection of his high school highlights before his freshman year in 2012. Although he was recruited as a thrower for the Runnin’ Bulldogs’ track and field team, he still held gridiron dreams.

The coaching staff, however, didn’t have that same vision. Young never heard back from them, and it turned out to be the best failure he ever experienced.

“He was a little defeated,” former Gardner-Webb track coach Andy Fryman said. “From there, I guess he had kind of like a chip on his shoulder. Track and Field became his calling and basically his outlet to prove to people that he is really good at what he does and he wants to be one of the best.”

Young earned that distinction by placing third in the hammer throw at the U.S. Olympic trials and thus claiming a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Now, he’s out to be considered one of the best in the world when the hammer takes the worldwide stage Sunday night in Tokyo.

A winding journey

Competing is actually the easiest part of a journey from North Carolina to Japan that has been anything but straightforward. There were times that he thought he should give it up, because of his lack of funding.

“The journey isn’t easy, I hope that one day I can’t get a sponsorship to help me do this for at least another couple of years,” Young told the News & Observer. “The financial struggles nearly were literally going to put me out of the sport, and that was hard because in my soul I know that there are some great performances waiting to happen. I just need the time.”

Young has been methodically building in time as he’s grown into an elite thrower. He left Gardner-Webb for Southeast Louisiana when Fryman stopped coaching to pursue his own dreams of making the Olympics in the hammer. That’s where he met a new coach who would inspire him.

Amin Nikfar, a two-time Olympian who represented Iran in the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games, was an associate head coach at SELA. They clicked instantly, Nikfar joked, as “Two dudes that are real hungry to throw far and we found each other.”

Nikfar brought out the best in Young. He won the NCAA and U.S. titles in the hammer throw in 2017. It’s why when Nikfar got a job at Stanford, Young followed him to Palo Alto to continue training under his guidance. And again when Nifkar changed coasts to join the staff and coach throws at UNC, Young packed up and relocated to Chapel Hill in 2019, where he’s been living and training since.

Now is his time

Young made the U.S. team by tossing a personal best 256 feet, 11.52 inches on his final throw at the U.S. trials in June. His third-place finish was partly because the silver medalist Daniel Haugh threw a personal record and gold medalist Rudy Winkler set a new American record at 271 feet, 4.2 inches.

The trio is considered by some to be the strongest U.S. team ever assembled. They’ll face a big challenge as the last time a U.S. thrower captured Olympic gold was in 1956.

“I don’t even think about that stuff I just try to go in and compete,” Young said. “I want something over and 78.32 (meters), which is my PR 256 feet, 11 inches. Beyond that I want to just do what I got to do in order to qualify out of the first round and make it to the second day and then make that final.”

Young believes in taking it day-by-day, otherwise he probably would have folded under the stress of working 50-hour weeks. He’d work the front desk at the Loudermilk Center of Excellence at UNC during the day and serve as a tutor during the evening — all while still setting aside time to train.

There was even a time when, unbeknownst to patrons of a grocery store on South Estes Drive in Chapel Hill, Young was filling their online orders. For a sprinter or someone in gymnastics, there’s no such thing as an an Olympic bagger. But for Young, it’s the reality that comes with participating in one of the least glamorous events in the Summer Games.

The lack of exposure from the hammer means it’s one of the most difficult to cultivate sponsorships. Young’s pursuit of making the Olympic team has largely come out of funding from his own pockets.

He’s had grants from the USA Track and Field Foundation and a $5,000 stipend to serve as an ambassador for the Global Youth Initiative. He’s still waiting to hear back about a grant he applied for earlier this year.

“Track and field’s already not lucrative and I’m throwing an event that gets zero TV time,” Young said.“So as you can imagine, I’m trying to do anything I can to just stay afloat and that was one of the ways that I had to pay bills was get that job at the grocery store.”

It gives some of his competitors in places that fully fund their athletes a bit of a head start, because they can simply focus on training.

But Young isn’t complaining.

When you endured what he has endured just to reach the Olympics, nothing will lessen the experience for him. Especially not the restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic that meant he could not participate in the opening ceremonies, and will mean he won’t be performing his throws in front of 70,000 people in a packed Olympic Stadium. That’s actually the one thing that will feel somewhat normal, Young said he usually just throws in front of “a handful of people and people’s parents.”

“We’re already kind of ostracized as hammer throwers off to the side in most events so for me it’s not really a big difference from where we’re already at,” Young said. “Of course I would love a lot more people to come to these events and, and really get a chance to be exposed to throwing really understanding it, you know, just become a true fan of it. But you know, just as of right now we don’t really get to see that ever so that being said in Tokyo, we’ll just keep moving on.”

This story was originally published July 31, 2021 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Alex Young’s Olympic dreams included a stay with coach Amin Nikfar in Chapel Hill."

C.L. Brown

The News & Observer

C.L. Brown covers the University of North Carolina for The News & Observer. Brown brings more than two decades of reporting experience including stints as the beat writer on Indiana University and the University of Louisville. After a long stay at the Louisville Courier-Journal, where he earned an APSE award, he’s had stops at ESPN.com, The Athletic and even tried his hand at running his own website, clbrownhoops.com.