Former Giants first-round running back David Wilson may have retired from football, but he’s not retiring.
Appearing in studio on Friday’s Pro Football Talk on NBCSN, Wilson told Dave Briggs that the 2012 rookie whose football career has ended after a pair of neck injuries hopes to return to another sport in which he had a high degree of success: track and field.
Wilson specialized in the triple jump. As a freshman at Virginia Tech, his 51-foot, five-inch effort in early 2010 ranked in the top 20 among NCAA athletes. He improved that to 51-9 the following year at the ACC Championships (indoors). Outdoors, he placed sixth nationally in 2011 with a jump of 53 feet, 1.75 inches.
He’ll need to improve his personal best by roughly 10 percent to climb to the top of the medal podium at an Olympics; in 2012, Christian Taylor of the USA won gold in London with a jump of 58.43 feet.
Still, Wilson has never focused his efforts on track. Now that football is out of the picture, he has a chance to maximize his potential. We wish him the best as he tries to get there.