UNDEFEATED. That has a pretty good ring to it. Anavia Battle has been on a hot streak lately. The 26-year-old Ohio State alum is having her best season since ’21, when she won a Big 10 sprint double, placed 3rd in the NCAA 200, and made the Olympic team with her PR 21.95 at the OT.
This season, after bypassing indoors, she broke 11 for the first time in the 100, then won 4-straight DL 200s. She says she’s not surprised by the rollout of her ’25 edition: “Since I’ve been in the lab with my coach and I’ve just been focusing on me and he’s been giving me cues, I feel like it was expected.”
That coaching piece is a big part of the picture for Battle. While running for the Buckeyes, she found success in the mentorship of Joel Brown, who has guided the speed program in Columbus for the past decade. All told, Battle made All-America 6 times and won 12 Big 10 titles, 10 of them in individual events.
After her final season in Columbus, Battle signed with adidas and moved to Texas where she trained for a year alongside Gabby Thomas under the guidance of Tonja Buford-Bailey. The hoped-for improvement didn’t come. In the ’23 season, she only reached bests of 11.34 and 22.47. Of that period, she simply says, “The training wasn’t built for me; that can [happen] with any athlete, honestly. So I just went back home to where it worked best for me.”
Not many world class sprinters move up to the Snow Belt for training, but Battle, a former Michigan prep, shrugs it off. “I’m from the North. I’ve run in snow before, I’ve run in rain. So it’s like I really don’t need heat to run fast, know what I’m saying? I’m pretty cool where I’m at.”
The Columbus difference boils down to Brown’s coaching. “He’s a sprint guru. I’ve known him for what, 8 years? He’s been the best coach/father figure. At first there was a rough patch because he would always say he was getting on my nerves. He saw something in me that I didn’t see, and he would push me.”
He wasn’t the first coach who pushed her. At Memorial High in Wayne, Michigan, her brother Montel Hood held the state record in the 400 at 46.29. Their coach, Jamal Johnson (now the coach at Div. II Seton Hill) was unable to sell Battle on the longer event (“No thank you! Who wants to be in pain?”). Instead she hit bests of 11.61 and 23.52 in the shorter sprints.
With Brown, she says, “He lets me relax in the off-season as long as I stay active, jogging or biking or something. But in-season fall training? That’s your worst nightmare. By the time we get to the season, I think my body’s conditioned to handle the things that he puts me through. I do have moments, like, ‘Why do I do this? Why does this hurt so bad?’ But I have gotten really good at my recovery. I won’t say the workouts are too harsh. Maybe they’re kind of crazy sometimes, but I do manage them really well.”
She adds, “Coming back to my college coaching is kind of like starting from where we finished, but also creating a new pro foundation. It’s kind of the same but kind of different. I feel like this time I have to take it more seriously because it’s my job.”
Not that everything went her way once she returned to Columbus. Last season, she hit a 100 best of 11.05 and made the OT final, placing 9th. But her bread-and-butter half-lap event didn’t play out so well. She placed 4th in her semi and missed the final by 0.08. “This one definitely hurt,” she posted afterwards.
“I went behind the stadium and literally cried my eyes out,” she admits. “I walked back to the hotel, 30 minutes away. I was down for about 72 hours. My coach said, ‘You can be sad. For this amount of time allow yourself to be upset. But then, you know, the season’s not done. There are plenty of races after the Olympics. There’s still the possibility for you to have a really good year and a good ranking because that’s all that matters.’”
She ran a season-best 22.27 in Rome and placed 3rd in the DL Final. That helped her to a No. 10 World Ranking. And that was despite falling victim to a nut allergy the day before the Final. “I had a Belgian waffle and I guess it had nuts on it. I was doing my friend’s eyelashes and I didn’t feel right. I went and looked in the mirror and my eyes were swollen damn near shut.” After an ambulance ride and a few hours at the hospital, she opted to race the next day. “Let me just go ahead and take care of business,” she says of her mindset.
Battle has always experienced more success at the 200. She says, “I really do like the 200, but the 100 is where I find peace, because there’s no pressure on me. Lately there has been no pressure on me for the 200, so I’m grateful for that. But in the 100, people don’t expect anything from me and I like to surprise them every time.”
Her first trip under 11-seconds came at Florida’s Jones Memorial. Originally slated to run the 200 as well, Battle says Brown had her focus just on the 100: “We’re just going to run one race, let’s make the best of it.”
She hit 10.98, edging Mackenzie Long (11.02) with Olympic 5th-placer TeeTee Terry in 4th. “It’s been a long road with the 100 and I’ve been so close so many times. It’s funny because it didn’t even feel like it was fast.”
Battle stresses that the spiritual side is a major reason for her resurgence. She references 2 Timothy 1:7 and says, “This year God has been working overtime within me. This year I realized I cannot do anything without Him, and since I do have Him, my faith has been stronger than ever and I fear no more.”
She says she is more confident than ever. It even shows in her pre-race demeanor. “I used to be really quiet on the circuit, and now I’m like, Hey! I’ll talk to my competition before we run. I don’t think they like it,” she says with a laugh.
On the circuit she will often room with hurdler Grace Stark, another Michigander. “I love my little Grace. I call her ‘Stark the Shark.’ You need to be around people that are like-minded so every time we’re on the circuit, I’m like, ‘Hey girl, let’s be roommates.’ That’s my girl. And we can bond over Michigan things.”
Battle is looking forward to the chance to return to Tokyo for September’s Worlds. Her ’21 experience, she says, “really was weird.” She explains, “It was my first time traveling internationally. I had been to Canada, but that’s like across the street from Michigan. This was my first time being alone. I was kind of the deer in the headlights. I was ready to go home as soon as I got there. I was overwhelmed.
“This time we’ll actually have a crowd. And we’ll get to explore Japan. That should be fun.”
Till then, with crucial USATF Champs racing also on the schedule, she will be in Columbus, training hard to be ready. “Sticking with the program. I find joy in checking the boxes at practice and going above and beyond.”
