Long road to Oregon
Former Concord-Carlisle standout Ratcliffe ready for Olympic Trials
On Friday, Thomas Ratcliffe will be running in the race of his life.
To get there, he ran the race of his life.
A graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Concord-Carlisle High School graduate, Ratcliffe placed seventh in the 5,000 meters at the NCAA Div. I National Championships on June 11 in Eugene, Ore., earning firstteam All-America honors for the second time in his career.
His time of 13 minutes, 20.88 seconds was not only a personal record, it broke North Carolina’s school record of 13:32.50 that Ralph King set in 1977 and it earned him a return trip to Eugene for the U.S. Olympic Trials. He will run in the first round of the 5,000 on Friday.
“I feel pretty good about the race,” Ratcliffe said. “I definitely have high expectations and always try to compete to win so going in I was hoping to finish a couple spots higher, but the past year I’ve come a long way and persevered through a lot of health issues so just to feel like I’m getting back on track and to say I PR’d and gave it my best shot despite having a lot of hurdles this year is all I can really ask for right now. I’m feeling excited about the trials, I remember going to these as a kid with my dad, so just being able to participate in them really brings it full circle for me.”
In Ratcliffe’s last appearance in the NCAA outdoor championships, in 2019, he placed third in the 5,000 in 14:07.92 while running for Stanford University, where he began his collegiate career.
“The race in 2019 was pretty different. It started off really slow then had a big finishing kick,” Ratcliffe said. “This year the race was fast right from the gun, faster than most of the field or I had ever started so it was a new experience.”
At Concord-Carlisle, Ratcliffe was the 2016 Massachusetts Gatorade Track Athlete of the Year. He led the Patriots to the 2016 All-State Indoor Track title. Between the indoor and outdoor seasons, he won three All-State titles in the outdoor 2-mile, the indoor mile and the indoor 4x800. At the 2016 Adrian Martinez Classic, on his home track, Ratcliffe set a state and New England record in the mile of 4:01.50.
“Our team benefitted from the standard he set at practice,” said Mary McCabe, Concord-Carlisle’s distance coach and currently the head boys cross country coach at the school. “He always showed up ready to work. He’d offer to do a circuit with someone who was not in his group.”
At Stanford, Ratcliffe’s career had its ups and downs. He battled injuries and illness at various times. He did not compete in the 2017-18 cross country, indoor or outdoor seasons, but he learned what he needed to learn from those experiences.
“I think the last couple years I’ve gotten a lot smarter with my training,” he said. “I know when to push myself hard and when to back off and give myself time to recover a lot better now than when I was in high school. I learned that the hard way when I got hurt badly at the start of my college career because I didn’t know when to back off and I just tried to push through everything.”
Said former C-C coach Stephen Lane, “It’s a real mental challenge to pick yourself up and get after it again and again. Somebody like Thomas has been so successful a lot of people don’t see how hard he’s worked and how tough a road it’s been for him.”
After graduating from Stanford in 2020, Ratcliffe still had one season of eligibility left in cross country, indoor and outdoor track. He decided to head back East and reunite with Chris Miltenberg, who coached at Stanford until 2019, at North Carolina.
“I decided to come to UNC after my coach moved from Stanford to UNC following the 2019 season,” Ratcliffe said. “I finished up my degree in 2020 but I struggled with some injuries and I just wanted to give myself the best opportunity to run for a full year healthy which I felt like was with my old coach.”
While Ratcliffe was best known as a miler in high school, and he broke the 4-minute mark at this season’s ACC indoor championships (3:59.20), he’s discovered his strength lies in longer distances.
“In college I’ve run the 5,000 more so than the 1,500 or mile,” Ratcliffe said. “The mile is still my favorite event but as I’ve started to run full year-round in college and run more mileage and I’ve increased my ability to compete in the longer distances so I’ve shifted a bit more to that.”
In college, Ratcliffe also started doing something he did not do in high school. He ran cross country in the fall. At C-C Ratcliffe played soccer. He was a team captain as a senior and was a part of the Patriots’ undefeated state championship team as a junior in 2014.
“Cross country was an interesting experience,” he said. “I really liked the team aspect of the sport and that reminded me a lot of playing soccer in high school. Running that far (10K) has not been my greatest strength but it definitely helped my ability to stay focused in the shorter races like the 5K and mile during track season.”
When Ratcliffe is on the starting line on Friday for the Olympic Trials, it will be exactly two weeks since he posted his qualifying time at the NCAAs. It’s a quick turnaround, but he’s looking forward to the challenge.
“In between races I’m just recovering a bit and getting ready to give an another good effort,” Ratcliffe said. “With some of the health issues I’ve had this year I still feel relatively fresh late in the season right now and like I’m improving a lot in between races. I’m not expecting to make the team or anything at trials, I just want to get in the final and finish as high up as possible.”