NCAA 100m hurdles record holder Masai Russell signs sponsorship deal with Nike

American hurdler Masai Russell recently signed a sponsorship deal with one of the world’s largest athletic footwear and apparel organizations, Nike.

Russell is the present NCAA 100m hurdles record holder with a time of 12.36s and recently took part in the Tom Jones Memorial Invitational 2024. She finished fifth in the Heat 1 of the 100m hurdles open event, clocking 12.62s. However, she recorded a DNF (did not finish) in the event’s final.

Fitzroy Dunkley, the Rio Olympics 2016 silver medalist who turned into a digital creator, reported the news of Masai Russell signing a deal with Nike on his X (formerly Twitter) handle, stating:

“NCAA Great Masai Russell is signed to Nike."

In the post, he shared two pictures of Russell donning a green t-shirt with a Nike logo on it.

Russell opened her indoor season at the UK Rod McCravy Memorial 2024. She finished second with a time of 7.89s, only behind the current world record holder Devynne Charlton, who clocked 7.88s in the finals.

She then participated at the USA Indoor Track and Field Championships 2024, coming in third in the women’s 60m hurdles finals. She was then picked in the U.S. squad for the World Athletics Indoor Championships 2024.

At the World Indoor Championships, she narrowly missed out on the medal by placing fourth, clocking a time of 7.81s, behind bronze medalist Pia Skrzyszowska of Poland (7.79s).

The University of Kentucky’s alumna was also a part of the USA squad for the World Athletics Championships 2023. She came ninth in the overall heats in the 100m hurdles, but couldn’t progress to the finals after a DNF in the semi-final 2.

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Masai Russell previously signed a deal with Gymshark

Ackera Nugent (L) and Masai Russell (R) at the World Athletics Championships Budapest 2023. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images for World Athletics)

Masai Russell had earlier signed a sponsorship deal with Gymshark in June 2022. She opened up about how her conversation with Gymshark began after they contacted her during the SEC Indoor Championships. She talked about this in a conversation with YouTuber Jonathan Jones on his channel, Speak Your Success Media, stating:

“They emailed me and it was like a regular email. 'Hey, we want to get on a call,' and it said that it was from Gymshark. I was like 'Gymshark is a big brand and I'm ready to talk to them.' They introduced who they were, and what the goal was that they see me doing within their company.”

She also mentioned how the agreement took some time to be put in action:

“We just talked over the course of March for like two months to truly understand and negotiate and get the price that I wanted to get paid for all the posts and everything that I was going to be doing within the contract.”

Russell added:

“I guess a lot of negotiation back and forth wanting this to be changed, wanted that to be changed, different things like that. After two months of negotiating, I ended up signing with them. I was like one of the three NIL athletes that they picked.”

In addition, Masai Russell joined the WWE NIL program on December 8, 2021, during her collegiate athletics career.