London Games: South Hills Race Walker Competes Today

, 19, of Bethel Park, will compete for the gold in the Olympic 20-kilometer race walk today in London.

Barron, a computer science major at Colorado College who recently completed his freshman year, won the U.S. Olympic trials' 20,000-meter race walk (50 laps around the Hayward Field track) in 1:23:00.10, setting three records in the process, according to armorytrack.com.

His 1:02:06.57 was an American record at 15,000 on the track, and the final 1:23.00.10 was both "an all-time Olympic trials best and an American best-ever, anywhere, on the track," the site reports.

Barron was the only athlete in the event to earn a spot on the U.S. team.

Barron recently spoke with the Post-Gazette about his past struggles—he was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 8, and at 13, he had a serious surgery to correct the chronic neurological disorder seen most often through frequent seizures and was supposed to be free of further burden, the newspaper reports.

He discovered race walking on a spring break trip to Texas to train with the country's only purely race walk team, the South Texas Walking Club, according to the newspaper. 

His race is scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT); 12 p.m. Eastern Time. However, according to NBC Olympics listings, most of the race will be shown on MSNBC on a tape delay from 4:45 to 6 p.m. ET.

There is so much more to Barron's story.

Read the full Post-Gazette article here.

Also, check out his interview—which includes video—with the Tribune-Review's Dejan Kovacevic here.

To watch the race walk live, you can visit nbcolympics.com in advance and complete the sign-up process.