Emeri Cotton, 8, Broke Two National Sprint Records on Back-to-Back Days

Emeri Cotton is eight years old, and this week she became the fastest girl her age the country has ever timed over two different sprints. Competing at the 2026 AAU Junior Olympic Games at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa, Cotton set national under-8 records on back-to-back days, running 100m in 13.67 seconds and then 200m in 27.36 seconds. She traveled more than 1,000 miles from her home in Bear, Delaware, to get there, and she is not done yet.

Two Records in Two Days

The first came on Tuesday, when Cotton ran 13.67 for 100m in a preliminary round, taking down a national under-8 mark of 13.85 that she had matched just a month earlier. A day later she was back on the track for the 200m semifinals and clocked 27.36, comfortably inside her own record of 27.99 from last year’s meet. For good measure, she already owns the under-8 record in the 400m as well, a 1:04.33 she ran to win the event a year ago.

Both of this week’s marks came in qualifying rounds, which means the finals are still ahead of her. Those are set for Saturday, giving Cotton a chance to lower her own new records again with medals on the line.

Putting the Times in Perspective

It is hard to appreciate how fast that is for an eight-year-old without a reference point. Consider that the Delaware high school record in the 100m is 11.59 seconds, set by Daija Lampkin, who went on to run at the University of Alabama, and the state high school 200m record, also Lampkin’s, is 23.63. Cotton is running those distances against the clock a full decade before most athletes reach high school, and rewriting the national standards for her age group while she does it.

A Running Family

The talent did not come from nowhere. Cotton’s father, Sam Cotton, was an all-state running back at Newark High School and ran on the school’s championship 4x400m relay as a sophomore before turning his focus to football, and her mother, Amber Wise, ran track at Newark as well. Her grandfather founded the Cotton Club Posse, the Bear-based youth running club where Emeri trains at Middletown High School.

Her parents have been clear that they want the records to stay in perspective. “I was just excited because I know Emeri has a goal,” Wise told WDEL. “She knew what the record was and she wanted to break it, and that’s what she’s been working towards.” Sam Cotton, for his part, said the family is careful to let their daughter be a kid. “We want her to still have fun and be a kid, we don’t want to overwork her,” he said. “She’ll break a record and ask if she can go swimming now.”

That balance may be the most encouraging part of the story. Cotton is already faster over 100m, 200m and 400m than any under-8 runner on record in the United States, the kind of young talent that recalls teenage phenoms like Gout Gout and Quincy Wilson a few years further along. For now, though, she is an eight-year-old with a couple of national records, a final still to run, and a pool waiting for her back home.