Being a student-athlete is a balancing act, but for international athletes like UTSA graduate student Hugo Menin, it’s also a rare opportunity — one he couldn’t have found back home. In France, combining academics and athletics isn’t nearly as accessible. Here, Menin has found structure, speed and recognition.
Last Tuesday, Menin was named the American Athletic Conference Men’s Track Athlete of the Week — the first UTSA track and field athlete to earn the honor this outdoor season and his first collegiate weekly award.
“I was really surprised and honored,” Menin said. “There are a lot of good athletes in the conference and on our team. I didn’t expect it. I know I can do better, so it was a surprise.”
The award was personal, but Menin immediately pointed to the potential around him.
“We have so many people with good potential on the team. Some athletes are still young, and I think I’m not the last one,” he said. “There will be a lot of Athletes of the Week, especially on the women’s side.”
Menin’s journey began nearly 17 years ago in the small French commune of Cysoing, where he first caught attention during a school race at the age of seven. His mother wasn’t there to see the race, but word quickly got to her.
“In France, every little school has a race just for fun. But for me, it wasn’t fun. I needed to win,” he said. “People went to see my mother while she was working and said, ‘He runs really fast. You should put him in track.’ So, I started to do track.”
His talent came at a young age, but so did the pressure of winning. The expectations weighed heavily on him, and when the wins stopped, the joy he had felt toward racing began to disappear. That’s when he turned to hurdles.
“The only fun part was winning, and I wasn’t winning anymore. So I decided to go with the hurdles,” Menin said. “I was winning, but I was so stressed, and I wasn’t really serious about training. Kids started to catch me, and they beat me. Everyone was expecting me to be fast, but it was too much pressure for a young kid.”
He started to train on his own until a coach eventually took notice and brought him into a hurdle-specific group where he improved his skill. Now, Menin’s biggest focus is perfecting the rhythm between each hurdle.
“At the beginning of the season, the goal was to get the right foot-pattern down. The times didn’t matter — it was about control,” Menin said. “Now that I have that, it’s time to take more risks and try to gain more speed because to go to Nationals, we need to run more than 0.5 seconds faster.”
Menin took first place in the men’s 400m hurdles at the UTSA Invitational — the season’s first outdoor event — where he finished in 51.16 seconds. He also finished third-place at the 97th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays with a season-best 51.07 seconds.
Menin runs relays, where he gets the opportunity to continue to develop his original passion for sprinting alongside his teammates. Affectionately dubbed “The M Team” by his grandmother, Menin alongside Mike Roth, Martin Kouyoumdjian and Matthew Mils ran in the 4x400m relays in Austin. The team recorded a time of 3-minutes and 7.25-seconds to claim fourth place at Texas’ hardest college relay race; they claimed the second best time in the AAC. While his focus is on this season, Menin is aware of the road ahead — one that becomes harder after graduation.
“Back home, you need to choose between your studies and sports, so combining both is really complicated,” he said.
Menin spent nearly two hours on the road daily when he attempted to attend school and become an athlete in France. No college student nor athlete has the time to dedicate two hours on the road just to accomplish their goals. Here at UTSA, Menin does not need to waste a single second of his time, but that will not always be the case. He will need to reevaluate his schedule after he graduates. Menin plans to go pro after graduating — a sentiment shared among a few international student-athletes at UTSA.
Despite being one of the oldest sports in history, track and field is not the most popular. These days athletes need to be fast and influential to gain sponsors and recognition, but with the help of his coach and entrepreneur @hey.basilou, Menin is headed down the right track.
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