U.S. Sprinter Sam Blaskowski Leaves Star Athletics Over Racist Posts From High School

Sam Blaskowski, the 9.89 sprinter who hopes to race for Poland, has left Star Athletics, the Florida training group coached by Dennis Mitchell, and on Wednesday apologized for racist posts he made as a teenager.

The posts came back into circulation while Poland’s athletics federation was assembling his citizenship application. On Sept. 17, federation president Sebastian Chmara told WP SportoweFakty that most of the documents were in hand and that the file would reach President Karol Nawrocki by the end of September, along with a request to speed it through. “We believe the president will help us, because this could be a big boost for our national team,” Chmara said (translated from Polish).

Erin Brown, who posts on X as @TheErinBrown, published the first item on Sept. 14, a high school video in which Blaskowski uses the N-word several times. Within days she added a screenshot of a racist joke he had posted, as LetsRun reported. In his statement on Instagram, Blaskowski dated the material to “almost seven years ago.” He turns 24 in November.

“First there are no excuses to use this type of language ever,” he wrote. “I take full ownership of what I said and want to sincerely apologize for using these words, I am embarrassed and ashamed of myself.”

According to Blaskowski, the posts had already cost him when they first appeared, though he gave no details, and he had used the days since to contact coaches, teammates and others in the sport “to attempt to rebuild the bridges of trust I have damaged.”

Star Athletics, where Sha’Carri Richardson and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden train, posted about 30 minutes after he did. Blaskowski wrote that he had removed himself from the group; the club pointed to its code of conduct and said it had “actively reviewed this situation internally” before concluding that he should go. Its statement opened: “Star Athletics does not condone racism, discrimination or bullying of any kind.” His time in Clermont, Fla., lasted a matter of months; he came to the group from UW-La Crosse, a Division III school.

Justin Gatlin, who was coached by Mitchell during his own career, said in comments published by Citius Mag that “those kinds of things can not happen in our sport” and that athletes should be able to treat sport as “a sanctuary or safe haven.”

Poland’s Interest in a 9.89 Sprinter

No Polish man has broken 10 seconds for 100m. Marian Woronin’s 10.00 from 1984 is still the national record, and Blaskowski ran 9.89 at the Music City Track Carnival on May 30, a time that shares ninth place on the 2026 world list. He also clocked 19.93 for 200m in June, and earlier this month he was fourth in the invitational 100m at the Diamond League final in Brussels in 10.26.

Blaskowski’s family comes from Sompolno, in central Poland; his great-grandparents left for the United States in 1905. The first approach came from Poland’s sprint coach, Piotr Maruszewski, after Music City, Notes From Poland reported. By August the American was racing on Polish tracks, three times in all, including the Silesia Diamond League in Chorzów, and he had passed on the U.S. championships altogether.

Blaskowski did not say in his statement where he will train next. The main target, according to WP SportoweFakty, is the European Indoor Championships in Valencia, March 4 to 7, 2027, which would mean a citizenship decision in a fraction of the one to three years the process usually takes.