A memorial to honor sprinter Trinity Gay, 15, the daughter of U.S. Olympian Tyson Gay, has grown outside the track at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. Dozens of pairs of track spikes, many adorned with personal messages, hang on a fence amid balloons of pink and purple, the young athlete’s favorite colors.
As darkness fell on Monday night, more than 1,000 friends, school staff, coaches, and family members gathered at the track for a candlelight vigil to honor Gay, a Lafayette sophomore, who was killed early Sunday morning in gunfire outside a Lexington restaurant. Three men have been charged in connection with Gay’s shooting, according to the Associated Press, and Lexington police say they believe Gay was not in either of two vehicles involved in the incident.
Among the mourners Monday was Gay’s mother, Shoshana Boyd, and Gay’s father, who spoke briefly during the ceremony.
“I want you guys to love each other, have peace, and protect each other,” Tyson Gay said. “That’s what Trinity would have wanted. Life is not a joke.”
Gay was following in her father’s footsteps as a track standout. In 2014, as a seventh grader, she joined the Scott County High School track team. That spring she advanced to the Kentucky Class 3A state championships where she placed third in the 100-meter final in a time of 12.34 seconds and fourth in the 200-meter final in 25.44.
Watching Gay that weekend was Kathy Broadnax, head track and field coach at Lafayette’s crosstown rival Bryan Station High School. “It was kind of an ‘aha’ moment,” Broadnax said. “Here she is, a seventh grader, competing against 12th graders. It’s one of those things as a coach you look at and you’re like, ‘Wow, by the time she’s in the 12th grade, if she continues on this path, no one will be able to touch her.’”
Gay returned to the state finals the next two years. In the spring, as a freshman running for Lafayette, she lowered her personal best times to 12.15 in the 100 meters and 25.42 in the 200. Broadnax had several opportunities to watch her compete each season.
“Trinity definitely had the potential to be one of the best sprinters that Kentucky has seen, if she was willing to take her natural talent and develop it into what we knew she could be,” Broadnax said. “And I think last spring we saw her developing it a little more and putting things together. She and Crystal [Washington, head coach at Lafayette] and her other coaches really were getting it to click with her last spring.
“The hardest thing when you have a famous parent is that you follow in their footsteps,” Broadnax continued. “And what I loved about Trinity is that she was like, ‘That’s my dad, but I’m going to be my own person and I’m going to shine on my own.’”
In addition to competing for her school, Gay ran during the summers as a member of the Lexington Blazin’ Cats youth track team, made up of athletes from throughout the Lexington area. “They’re a family in the summer,” Broadnax said. “They’re really close-knit despite the rivalries of the school year. I had eight or 10 kids who came to speak with me about [Gay’s death] today.”
As Broadnax helps her team members with the loss of a friend and rival, she expects the most difficult adjustment will come in several months, when track season begins.
“I truly believe it won’t hit home to everyone until they set foot on the track next spring, and she’s not there,” Broadnax said. “But all of the Lafayette athletes I’ve spoken to as well as my kids, they’ve all said that next season is all about Trinity; everything we’ll do is for her. So I feel you’ll see Lexington schools really come together to push and really help each other as much as we can.”
Moved by the outpouring of love for his daughter at the candlelight vigil, Tyson Gay pled for an end to violence in his remarks. “I appreciate all the support,” Gay said, “but I need you guys to keep it going. It don’t want to read in the paper next week [about] another senseless killing. It has to stop.”
Tyson Gay, 34, set the Kentucky state high school 100-meter dash record in 2001, which still stands. The three-time Olympian ran 9.69 seconds for 100 meters in Shanghai in 2009, the American record and the second-fastest in history after Usain Bolt’s 9.58 from the 2009 Berlin World Championships. At the Olympic Games in August in Rio, he ran a leg on the U.S. 4x100-meter relay team that was disqualified for committing a baton exchange violation in the final.
