ASICS GTC-ELITE Bids Good Bye to Victor Pataky

ASICS Greenville Track Club-ELITE's Victor Pataky will be departing the program and Greenville, SC as he has accepted a collegiate coaching position at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. Pataky joined the post-collegiate, Olympic-development in August 2018 with an expectation of training and competing for two years while pursing his running dreams. His career ambition was and is to coach at the collegiate level and this opportunity allows him to pursue that goal starting in January, 2021. 

Pataky and Eddie Garcia

Victor & Eddie

Victor graduated from Centre College in Kentucky in 2016 and then coached as an assistant at Webster University in St. Louis, MO, before relocating to Greenville in August 2018. He improved his personal best in the 3000m Steeplechase from 9:03.87 to 8:56.67 in 2019 before not being able to compete on the track in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also became the first coach for the Greenville Track Club's Youth Running Program -- the GTC Rabbits. In September of 2020, he placed 4th in the Low Country Elite 5K before running the 7.195K leg in the 2020 ASICS World Ekiden Relay in November, in which his team placed first among USA region teams and won the Retail Partners category while representing his employer, Fleet Feet Greenville. He finished his almost two-and-a-half year tenure in the program by running a huge 64 second personal best at the Mortgage Network Half Marathon, where he ran 1:07:05. He was ranked third in the December, 2020 South Carolina Road Race Rankings. ​

Pataky steeplechasing at Portland Track Festival.

"We going to miss Victor," explained Coach Mike Caldwell. "He was a great teammate and especially a great training partner with Eddie Garcia. Those two have run countless kilometers together over the past two-and-a-half years. Victor was a pleasure to coach, followed our advice, and he'll become a very good coach at the college level."

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GTC-ELITE was established in 2012. The program produced four qualifiers for the 2016 USA Olympic Trials Marathon in Los Angeles, one qualifier/participant for the 2019 Pam American Games Marathon in. Lima, Peru and three qualifiers/two participants for the 2020 USA Olympic Trials Marathon in Atlanta, GA.  The post-collegiate, Olympic development program is sponsored by ASICS, the 48-year-old Greenville Track Club, Joy Real Estate, the Borch Foundation, generous individual contributors and partnerships with Performance Therapy, Carolina Spine and Rehab, Roll Recovery products, FinalSurge (on-line training log), The ATI Running Academy, ElliptiGO, NormaTec Recovery Boots, Cocoa Elite recovery products, Stryd Running, Coach Bob Williams Pace Calculator, the DorsiFlex (stretching device), the MOBO board and On Pace Wellness (nutrition coaching).  The club is a proud and active member of both the Road Runners Club of America and  USATF.​

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