Steven Solomon

Solomon first began formal track training in 2009, and that year he won the Under-17 All-Schools Championship in the 400m. Solomon competed for Australia in the Maccabiah Games, the "Jewish Olympics", as captain of the junior soccer team at the 2009 Maccabiah Games. He was named the 2009 Maccabi New South Wales Junior Sportsman of the Year. After breaking the 30-year-old national junior record in the 400m in 2011, Solomon was part of the Australian squad in the 4 × 400 metres relay at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics. He won the 2011 Australia National Championship in the 400m at 17 years of age. In September 2011, he had a hamstring tear. He was named the Maccabi New South Wales Sportsman of the Year in 2011. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London at the age of 19, he competed in the finals of the Men's 400 m race, placing eighth with a time of 45.14, after running a time of 44.97 in the semifinals. Two and a half years prior, Solomon had never run a 400m race. He was the first Australian man in 24 years to reach the 400m final at the Olympics. He also ran on Australia's 4x400 relay team that ran 3:03.17 in the first round, and did not advance to the final. He won the 2012 Australia National Championship in the 400m in a time of 45.54, despite his hamstring injury. At the 2012 IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain, he won a bronze medal in the 400m as he set a personal record of 45.52. He was awarded the 2012 Richard Coombes Memorial Award for Most…

Solomon was born in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse, New South Wales, Australia, and is Jewish. His local rabbi is Levi Wolff, a Chabadnik who runs Sydney Australia's largest Modern Orthodox Judaism congregation, Central Synagogue. His father, Michael, is a South African-born orthopedic surgeon, and his mother is Lucille Solomon. He has a younger sister, Bianca. Solomon was raised in East Lindfield and attended Lindfield East Public School and Cranbrook School, Sydney. Solomon planned to follow his father into medicine after accepting an athletic scholarship in track at Stanford University. At Stanford, he studied Human Biology, and graduated in 2017. He is attending Duke University in 2017–18 to study for a Masters in Management Studies (MMS) at the Fuqua School of Business.