Asked recently how he makes ends meet, Holt replied: “I worked a job in a psych ward. And I live with my parents.”
The U.S. Olympic trials, which begin Friday night in Eugene, Ore., will bring together a constellation of world champions, Olympic medalists and smiling faces that appear on billboards and in commercials. Among them will be dreamers such as Holt who are there to remind of the fundamental appeal of track and field: The clock doesn’t care what you’re wearing or whether your girlfriend buys your meals. Run the time, and your life can change.
Holt, 29, decided years ago he wanted to be an Olympian against any feasible evidence it would be possible. He ran in college on a partial scholarship and never made the NCAA championships. He does not have a sponsor, which means he pays for his own equipment, physiotherapist and travel. He spent years training by himself after 13-hour shifts at a mental health clinic. He drove to races across the Northeast, rarely earning prize money and often relegated to B heats.
“Eric has never been someone who is pursuing logical dreams,” said Jacob Sweet, Holt’s best friend. “I’m not sure he knows he’s allowed to give up.”
Holt kept running year after year, hardship after hardship. He hooked on with a semiprofessional club, Empire Elite, that trains an hour away from his home in Upstate New York. He qualified for the 2021 Olympic trials and didn’t make the finals. He reached the final of the 2023 national championships and finished last. He has yet to make a national team or find financial stability. He has not stopped believing.
“My whole life, I wanted to be a professional athlete,” Holt said. “A lot of the sponsors say I’m still not good enough. Every race I step on the track, I just want to show the sponsors that I deserve to be a pro, that I’m not just some schmuck.”
This month in New York, Holt finished shoulder-to-shoulder with Great Britain’s Jake Wightman, the 2022 world champion. Though the clock showed 3:34.05, the best time of Holt’s career and the fifth fastest by an American this year, he was angry.
Speaking with reporters after the race, Holt chastised himself for finishing second and pleaded for a sponsor to notice him. He talks with raw vulnerability and runs with uncommon desperation. He knows he should relax his face and shoulders in the final 100 meters of a race. Instead, he is all bulging muscles and gritted teeth.
Holt is “terrified,” he said, every time he steps to a start line. A poor performance could embarrass him and Empire Elite. A victory over a field of professionals could give him the life he long has sought. But he also looks around and thinks to himself, “I can beat these guys.”
“I’m not someone just chasing a pipe dream,” Holt said. “I am not an underdog. I am definitely one of the favorites. I’m the fifth fastest right now. I can beat anyone on the world stage. I don’t say that lightly. I know what I’m capable of. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.
“The only reason I said all those things, I want to put some fire under these sponsors. I’m sick and tired of me living this life. I know I’m going to have my moment.”
Growing up in Carmel, N.Y., Holt played every sport but found them limiting. He felt like he always needed a teammate to pass him the ball or a coach to choose him for a team, and both seemed to happen only rarely. “I was always uncomfortable in my skin,” Holt said. In eighth grade, Holt joined his three older sisters on the track team. He loved the purity of running. It didn’t matter who believed in him. All that mattered was who crossed the finish line first.
“No matter what I did in life, I felt like I struggled to fit in,” Holt said. “I always felt like the hardest part of my sport career was having people believe in me. I was always the klutz or the goofy one, just couldn’t do anything quite right. But I felt track is a way for me to express myself. It’s the only time, when the gun goes off, I can really be myself and I can be confident.”
In his first season, he broke five minutes in the mile. Someone told him he could be great, maybe even make the Olympics. An ambition took hold. He recruited kids to run for the Carmel High track team.
“Eric convinced our team we were going to make nationals, even though we were terrible,” said Sweet, who quit the soccer team to join. “He was just a hugely inspirational figure. He was this guy that didn’t understand his own limitations, and he didn’t understand anyone else’s, either.”
Holt expected major college programs to recruit him after he won a state championship and made an all-American team. They either ignored him or offered him the chance to walk on. He was big for a miler and ran with muscular form in an event that rewards graceful strides.
“I looked like crap when I run,” he said. “I ran pretty quick, but it didn’t look pretty.”
Binghamton offered a third of a scholarship, and Holt could pay in-state tuition for the remainder. Sweet studied English at Yale, where he tracked his friend’s progress with mild obsession. He wrote a literary thesis on Holt’s quest to break a four-minute mile. Holt finished his college career in 2018 stuck on 4:00.65.
“Oh, man,” Holt told Sweet. “I kind of ruined your paper.”
No professional clubs showed interest in Holt, and he considered moving on. Sweet insisted he could still break four minutes if they trained together that summer. The push convinced Holt to keep going.
“He was the only person in the world that believed in my talent,” Holt said.
Holt’s father, Michael, worked as a nurse at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, N.Y. Holt needed only a bachelor’s degree to work there, and Michael got him a job as a tech in the adolescent unit. Eric’s primary job was to prevent patients from self-harm or suicide.
“People would cut themselves, and blood would get everywhere,” Holt said. “There would just be certain moments where I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, this is a little too intense of a job.’”
Holt would work 13 hours a day at Four Winds and train at night. On good days, the local high school football team would forget to turn the lights off at the track. Sometimes they would flicker off in the middle of workout. Holt ran by the faint glimmer of streetlights and the glow from his watch.
In the winter, he shoveled snow off the track. When there was too much to clear, he ran on the roads, Sweet driving behind at precisely 15 mph for pace. Holt would hop in the car to warm up between runs.
Sweet moved to Massachusetts after a year. In the summer of 2019, Holt traveled to a race alone. At dinner with a friend, Sweet monitored the live splits on his phone: 2:59 after three laps. When the final time popped up as 3:58, Sweet stood from the table, left his confused friend and sprinted down the street in celebration.
Empire Elite discovered him on Strava
John Trautmann and Tom Nohilly needed runners. They had been assistant coaches at the New Jersey-New York Track Club early in 2020 when Hoka cut its sponsorship. The head coach retired, the club folded, and Trautmann and Nohilly started a new team called Empire Elite.
Nohilly monitored possible members on Strava, the social media app on which runners post and compare workouts, and spotted the oddest thing: A runner was performing remarkably difficult workouts night after night at a small track between 11 p.m. and midnight.
“What is this kid doing?” Nohilly asked Trautmann. “Is this guy crazy?”
They did some quick research: The mystery man’s name was Eric Holt. He had posted promising times and tailed off in college, but his training showed how badly he wanted to be a runner. Nohilly sent Holt a direct message through Strava.
“We just thought a guy with that kind of drive, if we could channel that and have a structure, who knows how good he could be?” Trautmann said.
Holt came to Empire’s next practice. The guys there ran him off his feet. Trautmann, who ran at Georgetown and competed in the 5,000 meters at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, saw potential.
“He had something in him I haven’t seen in too many athletes,” Trautmann said. “Just this drive. This hatred of losing.”
Holt kept working at Four Winds. One day, a 14-year-old girl declared she was going to jump in front of a car and ran off. Holt sprinted, caught her and brought her to the ground. She kicked him in the knee so hard it bruised and remained sore for a month.
“I’m thinking: I wonder if these elite runners out there have this issue,” Holt said.
At the start of 2023, Holt stopped working at Four Winds to devote his full energy to running. His saw his greatest improvement but felt further financial strain. He moved in with his parents, and sometimes he feels embarrassed to admit it.
“My family is supportive,” Holt said. “But there’s some people in my life who look at me somewhat as a failure because they know I’m not making any money.”
Holt drives his parents’ Hyundai Tucson to and from practices. His girlfriend has a good job in New York City, and she pays when they eat out together.
“My girlfriend, she comes from a different sort of background than I do,” Holt said. “I know she hasn’t even told her parents about me yet, even though we’ve been dating over a year. I want to make the team. That way, when I’m finally introduced, it’ll be a good introduction.”
Sponsored runners do not have to worry about the funds in their bank account. They get massages twice a week. They can travel to European races. Empire Elite paid for an Arizona altitude training camp last fall and this spring, which boosted Holt’s training but also depleted the club’s funds.
“The club pays when we can,” Trautmann said. “We’re maxing out the credit cards right now.”
If Holt can sign a sponsorship deal, he knows he will move into a different phase of his life. He would like to buy a Toyota Camry and take his girlfriend on a date. He has come to believe a shoe company will sign him only if he makes the Olympics.
“They want some young person, even if he’s not as good as me,” Holt said. “It’s frustrating because I always tell people, ‘Hey if could be a 21-year-old, I would.’”
Sweet is writing a book about Holt. He does not quite understand why he spends so much time thinking about the friend he met when he was 8 years old.
“I always had to spend so much energy trying to prove to people I was worth their time,” Sweet said. “With Eric, he was the one convincing me that I could achieve ridiculous goals. His expectations were just so beyond the norm. It’s just so refreshing.”
This weekend at Hayward Field in Eugene, Sweet will watch Holt line up at the start. Holt will look around at his competitors and know they’re not thinking about him. But the years of toil and sacrifice have given him something the rest of them don’t have.
“This is a cruel, cruel sport,” Holt said. “Only three can make the Olympics. The one thing about me is I have desire. I know exactly who my competition are. I know exactly how good they are. I know they’re beatable. When it comes to that last lap, I’m going to be ready.”
