Ben Shelton reacts to Grant Holloway securing Male Track Athlete of the Year nomination beside Noah Lyles, Letsile Tebogo

Ben Shelton reacted to American star Grant Holloway being nominated for the Track Athlete of the Year at the 2024 World Athletics Awards. Both Shelton and Holloway are University of Florida alumni.

World Athletics recently released the lists of nominees for its coveted awards, which also included the list of men who would be battling out for the Track Athlete of the Year award.

Holloway had an impressive 2024, capturing the gold in the 110m hurdles at the Paris Olympics. Previously, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics he won silver in this event. He was nominated alongside compatriots Rai Benjamin and Noah Lyles, Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, and Letsile Tebogo.

Two men will be selected as finalists with one being announced as the winner. An overall winner from both men's and women's categories will also be announced this year.

Ben Shelton took to Instagram to react to Grant Holloway's nomination. He posted the World Athletic Awards' post announcing Holloway's nomination on his story and added a cutlery-and-plate emoji.

Screenshot of Ben Sheltons's Instagram story | Instagram@benshelton

The two Florida Gators alumni had a chat earlier this year ahead of the Paris Olympics where Shelton talked about how tennis players' workouts were similar to that of long-distance runners since both sports relied heavily on athletes' endurance.

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"I'm saying I'm dialed in" - When Ben Shelton explained his famous celebration was inspired by Grant Holloway

Ben Shelton (Source: Getty)

When Ben Shelton defeated Frances Tiafoe in the quarterfinals of the 2023 US Open, he made a gesture of putting the phone down as his celebration.

The American later explained during a press conference that the celebration meant that he was "dialed in" and was inspired by his fellow Florida Gators alumni and three-time 110m Grant Holloway.

Shelton said,

“I’m saying I’m dialed in…I’m really close friends with a lot track & field athletes who train at the University of Florida – where I live in Gainesville. One in particular, Grant Holloway, who’s won the World Championships I think 3 times in a row now - that’s kind of his signature thing. He loves doing this. A lot of athletes on the team started doing it after too.”

The celebration then became the center of a controversy when Novak Djokovic did it after defeating Shelton in the semifinals of the US Open last year.