NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Held the Tape as Brittni Mason Won a U.S. Title in New York

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani held the finish tape at Icahn Stadium on Saturday afternoon as Brittni Mason won the women’s ambulatory 100m at the U.S. track and field championships, the first national outdoor championships staged in the city in 35 years.

Mason ran 12.16 into a 2.3 m/s headwind to take the title, a few hours after winning her heat in 12.21 the same morning. The ambulatory final puts standing and running athletes into a single race, and Saturday’s nine-woman field spanned 11 classifications. Places were awarded on raw time while national titles were settled inside each class at the same time, so Kymberly Crosby, second overall in 12.57, won the T13 title, and Violet Hall, third in 12.88, won the T47. Mason, a T46, was first on both counts. She is 28, has five Paralympic medals from Tokyo and Paris, and has held the American record in her class, 11.89, since 2019.

Mamdani had spent the week promoting the meet. The city gave away 500 free tickets through a lottery that drew more than 7,000 entries, run in partnership with USATF New York, Central Park Track Club and New York Road Runners, and offered a 10 percent discount code for the rest. “One hundred and fifty years ago, a group of sprinters, jumpers and throwers gathered in New York for the first national track and field championship,” the mayor said in announcing the giveaway. He wrote afterward that it had been “an honor to welcome world champion and Paralympian Brittni Mason across the finish line,” and noted meeting Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, who won Sunday’s 200m, after the race.

The 150-year reference is accurate. The first U.S. championships were held in the Bronx in 1876, and the meet had not returned to New York City since 1991, when it was staged at Downing Stadium on the same stretch of Randall’s Island and Leroy Burrell lowered the 100m world record to 9.90. Downing was demolished in 2002 and Icahn Stadium was built on the ground it had occupied, opening in 2005. Usain Bolt set the first of his world records there on May 31, 2008, running 9.72 two months before the Beijing Olympics. The stadium holds 5,000 in its permanent grandstand, all of it on the home straight.

This was also the first time the USATF Para National Championships have been held in New York City, and the second year they have run alongside the outdoor meet, after USATF took over the Paralympic track and field program in January 2025. The two championships shared officials, timing and sessions across the four days, and the para events had their own streaming windows on Peacock.

Saturday’s session also produced Nikki Hiltz’s fourth consecutive 1,500m title in 4:06.92 and Curtis Thompson’s sixth career javelin win at 87.59, the longest throw by an American this year. Cooper Lutkenhaus took the 800m on Sunday. The championships return to Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., in 2027.