Matthew Wilkinson can’t remember of much of his viral moment on social media.

It happened a couple of months ago at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. As the former Gophers distance runner cleared the final hurdle in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, he raised his arms to his side, realizing he was going to be an Olympian. His jaw dropped as he crossed the finish line with a time of 8 minutes, 23 seconds.

“Then I got interviewed by NBC and said what I said,” Wilkinson said with a laugh. “Luckily, I didn’t say anything too stupid.”

Nothing too stupid at all. Just an outpouring of emotions from a late bloomer who had earned the right to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

“Am I dreaming?” Wilkinson said at the time. “Somebody wake me up because I can’t believe it.”

The disbelief is understandable when looking at Wilkinson’s journey to this point.

He was a distance runner for Minnetonka High School who never qualified for the high school state track meet. He continued his career at the Division III level at Carleton College, where he tried the 3,000-meter steeplechase for the first time. He succeeded, and ended up at the University of Minnesota as a grad transfer.

“I always thought I’d try it in college because of the way I’m built,” Wilkinson said. “I’ve got longer legs and played basketball growing up so I might have a little bit more hops than the average distance runner. As soon as I got to college, I did it, and it stuck. I thought it might be something I could be competitive at.”

That’s an understatement.

As he steadily progressed, Wilkinson proved he can hang with some of the best in the country. Now he’s competing against the best in the world. He will run in the preliminaries of the 3,000-meter steeplechase at 12:04 p.m. CT Monday with hopes posting a fast enough time to qualify for the finals.

Not bad considering Wilkinson was looking for jobs outside of the sport roughly a year ago.

“I was applying for jobs within my academic field and thought that was probably the route I was going to end up,” Wilkinson said. “Then I had that breakthrough (at the last year’s USA Track & Field Outdoor Championships) and showed a lot of coaches that I had potential.”

He signed with Mission Run Dark Sky Distance, a professional runners group sponsored by Under Armour, and set his sights on the Olympics.

“I’ve had a lot of smaller breakthroughs in my career,” Wilkinson said. “I think my first time competing with the Gophers was big for me because showed me I could do it. That’s when the professional dream started for me. I realized that if I gave it my all, I might be able to do something.”

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