Tim Seaman Retires As USA Champion 

By Elliott Denman 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – This time, Tim Seaman says his retirement from the racewalking game is for real. This time, he tells you, there really is no turning back. This time, he promises, it’s going to stick. 

This time, even the cynics – who’ve heard him “retire” from racewalking time after time in recent years, only to see him to change his mind – are ready to believe him.

So it’s truly time to say farewell to one of the most-medaled athletes in American track and field history.

And the 41-year-old now-California-based Long Islander is  going out in style, going out on top, still USA Indoor National 3000-meter champion. The 47th – and apparently final – national championship of Seaman’s career was claimed Sunday at the Albuquerque Convention Center. For over 12 laps around the 200-meter banked track, Seaman, the North Babylon (N.Y.) High School and University of Wisconsin-Parkside graduate, and old domestic rival John Nunn, duked itout. 

Seaman wisely let Nunn do all the pacesetting, hanging with him never more than a stride back. Then, as he’s done so many times in so many races over so many distances over so many years, Seaman decided enough was enough. He floored it, rushed past Nunn, and built a quick 12-meter lead. 

It seemed he was headed for yet another convincing national crown – and doing it going away, you might say. But this one was different. Nunn found another gear and began flooring it himself.

The crowd soon caught up with the goings-on, that Nunn was closing major ground around the final turn and might actually have enough in his tank to turn it all around. And so they sprinted it out down the final stretch, as the crowd really got it into it.

As it turned out, Nunn ran out of track room. The finish line loomed a meter or two too soon for him to win it and spoil the Seaman farewell party.

The final clockings tell you how close this one really was – Seaman 11:40.75, Nunn 11:40.95.

Yes, fans, this 3000-meter racewalk was a whole lot closer than the men’s 3000-meter run the day before – Bernard Lagat 7:46.01, Galen Rupp 7:48.14.

It was a crowd-pleaser just as the NYRR Millrose Games one-mile racewalk at The Armory the week before was a crowd-pleaser – Sweden’s Andreas Gustafsson outsprinting Ireland’s Robert Heffernan.

Seaman coulda/woulda been third in that one until he got too enthusiastic, too determined to be the first American walker over the line. He saw the dreaded red paddle – meaning disqualification for technique violations - less than 100meters from the finish line, as the U.S. title went to Jonathan Hallman.

That’s the sometimes-tough nature of the racewalking game – red paddles will happen, Even sometimes to the best of them. 

Seaman took it with ultimate sporting grace, stepped off The Armory track, and vowed he’d regroup for Albuquerque. Sure enough, that’s exactly what he did. Now – promise, promise - he’ll step away on his own terms.

Although he never did make a major impact in international racewalking over his long career – Curt Clausen is about the only American in recent years to make that claim – Seaman was a definitive dominator on the domestic scene.

“It’s the right time,” said Seaman, winner of 47 national titles at an array of distances (a total second only to Hall of Famer Ron Laird’s 63.) For 10 straight years, he went unbeaten in Indoor National racing. And he took the U.S. undercover crown a record 14 times. His 2013 season saw him win – at the Masters age of 40 – USA Indoors at 3,000 meters and USA Outdoors at 20,000 meters. 

“I can’t top that,” he realized. “So I think it’s better to go out that way.”

Seaman and wife Rachel – the Canadian women’s walk champion – are parents of young daughter Isabella. At some big meets, they’ll take turns Isabella-sitting.

Seaman is full of gratitude for all he’s achieved.

“USATF has given me the opportunity to travel across the world, to make great friends and to have unforgettable memories," he said. "Their assistance over the years has been irreplaceable. I set 12 American records in my career and still have eight of them. 

“The opportunity to wear USA across your chest is something that only USA Track and Field could have given me and that really means a lot.”

And he’s thankful to his team, the New York Athletic Club, as well. These days, Seaman coaches other young racewalkers around the nation as well as his track and cross country pupils at Cuyamaca College in southernmost California.

It’s his way of “putting back” into the branch of the sport that’s meant the world to him.

He first caught the racewalking “bug” as a Long Island high school lad – and that’s part of another of his laments.

Racewalking is still an official phase of the high school program in New York State – but only for girls. When the powers-that-be axed boys racewalking in New York, they also axed a huge part of the nation’s racewalk development pogram.It was an awfully shortsided call – instead of giving future Tim Seamans the chance to be international athletes, they ripped all of that away.

As a collegiate athlete, Seaman became Wisconsin-Parkside's first four-time NAIA racewalk champion, propelling his career into the elite, national race walking scene.

He made it to the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympic Games as a 20K man.  

“My first Olympics didn’t go exactly as I wanted,” he said, “but my second Olympic Games was the highest place for an American in the last 28 years. And for that, I’m proud.”

His coaching abilities are as obvious as his competitive skills. His star pupil these days is Maria Michta, another Long Islander and now a five-time winner of the women’s 3000-meter walk after her own 12:47.79 Albuquerque victory over Miranda Melville (12:59.75) not long after his own win. 

Well, says Seaman, that’s a wrap. 

It’s time. 

Promise, promise.