WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue Track & Field’s Samuel Vessat was named Big Ten Men’s Track Athlete of the Week, the conference announced on Wednesday.
Vessat is coming off a 20.48 in the 200m that was the fastest wind-legal time, second fastest overall, at the Spec Towns Invitational. He was also a big part of Purdue’s 4x400m that broke a school record in 3:02.15.
The Paris, France native’s 200m is No. 2 by a European runner in 2026, as well as the No. 3 wind-legal and No. 10 overall time in the NCAA this outdoor season. Impressively, Vessat never broke the 21-second barrier in a race until two weeks prior to this performance, when he ran 20.87 in Orland, Florida on March 28.
Purdue’s record-breaking 4x400m time, Vessat combined with Victory Achakpoekri, Zyan Greene and Zach Mylenek, ranks fifth in the nation this season and is the best time by a Big Ten team by 2.03 seconds. Vessat ran the second leg of the relay. Vessat’s presence, in the relay for the first time this outdoor season, helped Purdue shed over five seconds off its first 4x400m time of the season at South Florida (3:07.41).
Vessat is coming off an indoor campaign where he finished sixth at the NCAA Championships in the 400m to become the first Boilermaker to ever reach the podium in the event.
He marks Purdue’s first Big Ten Men’s Track Athlete of the Week since Samson Colebrooke on April 10, 2019 and the first Boilermaker to earn an award this outdoor season.
Looking forward to his first outdoor 400m as a Boilermaker, Vessat and the rest of the sprints, throws and jumps gear up for the Tom Jones Memorial in Gainesville, Florida (April 17-18), while distance prepares for the Wake Forest Invitational in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (April 16-17).
