Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall is both a fast runner and a trash talker, so maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. But Hall had so much confidence in his speed that an Olympic gold medalist says Hall offered him a six-figure bet for a footrace.
LaShawn Merritt, the reigning Olympic champion in the 400 meters, said in a Q&A at the IMG Academies website that Hall was itching to race him and was extremely confident he’d win.
“D-Hall is a trash talker, so of course he started talking that he could beat me in a race,” Merritt said. “I just won the gold medal so I wasn’t hearing any of it. He was going to put up $100,000 against my gold medal. He wanted to do a 40-yard dash, but we settled on the 100-meter. Nothing ever came of it, though.”
As Sarah Kogod of the Washington Post points out, a gold medal is worth a lot less than $100,000, so that’s not a great bet for Hall. More importantly, although Hall is fast, he’s not Olympic gold medalist fast. Hall is lucky nothing ever came of this bet.