50 Iowa moments since Title IX: Kineke Alexander becomes 400-meter national champion

Editor’s note: This is 21st in a series counting down the Top 50 moments in Iowa Hawkeyes women’s athletics history in the 50 days leading up to the 50th anniversary of Title IX in June.

Before Kineke Alexander made her three Olympic appearances, the sprinter had quite the accomplishment while representing Iowa track and field.

Alexander won the NCAA title in the 2006 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.

It was the first time a sprinter from Iowa’s women’s track and field program was an NCAA champion.

Her win, with a time of 52.16 seconds, came despite being placed in one of the slowest preliminary heats.

“Nobody expected me to win,” Alexander said. “Usually you don’t really get the winner from the slowest heat.”

She then advanced to the finals and beat a runner from Miami (Fla.) by one-hundredth of a second.

“They gave her the flowers and then they realized that my time was faster than her time,” Alexander said with a laugh.

The win, the flower flounder aside, helped her with “basically realizing, ‘Hey, I can do this.’”

Later that year, she set the Iowa record for the outdoor 400-meter race — a record that stood for 12 years. She still has the top marks in program history in the indoor 400-meter and 600-meter events.

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