United States sprinter Ronnie Baker is making one last push for an Olympic comeback.
According to Sports Spectrum, Baker ran “9.88 seconds in the 100-meter dash Friday at the 2026 USATF Outdoor Championships in New York, his fastest time since 2021 and good for a second-place finish behind Noah Lyles. It was the kind of performance that could put Baker back on the U.S. Olympic team for the first time since the Tokyo Games.”
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However, Baker doesn’t put his worth into making the Olympics. He revealed how much God has transformed his life over the years.
“I’m in a place now where I just have so much joy,” he told reporters on Friday after his race. “I look forward to getting here and competing because the joy of the Lord is my strength. He’s given me a gift in this track and field thing, and it’s not for me to be an Olympic champion or be the fastest ever or get a bunch of medals. It’s for me to enjoy the time that I have here and have joy in it. That joy draws me closer to Him, and that’s why I love this sport.”
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Baker didn’t start track and field until he got into high school, where he also played basketball. The 32-year-old sprinter ran track for Texas Christian University, and he also won two National Championships in the 60-meter dash.
“Even after that, I always felt like I was searching for something,” Baker said in a video for This Is My Story. “I would win a lot of races. I would beat the top guys. But when it came to medals, I felt like I could never get a medal when it mattered.”
When he finally made it to the Olympics in 2021, he placed fifth. He felt incredibly disappointed in his performance, which led to depression.
“Everything had led me to that point, and when that all came crashing down, I realized I had nothing to stand on,” he reflected. “I never really understood depression until it actually happened to me. I didn’t really want to do anything. The only thing I could think about was how I could fix what just happened, what went wrong, and it was just kind of this lethargic feeling of ‘I don’t have any feelings at all right now.’”
He still has a ways to go before the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, but no matter what happens on the track in the months ahead, Baker has already found the finish line that matters most — a life anchored not in medals but in the joy and strength only God can give.
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