Jonathan Matthews of Helena shattered two national records by huge margins in winning a pair gold medals at the Senior Olympics National Championships at Stanford University on August 8 and 10.

Matthews, 53, earned a rarely achieved 96 percent age-graded rating in the second of his races. In the 5,000-meter race walk, competing against 120 qualifiers from across the country, Matthews finished three minutes, 15 seconds ahead of second place, in a time of 22:57. It beat the old record time of 23:37, set by Norman Frable of Texas in 1997, by 40 seconds. Second place was Dave Couts of Missouri in 26:12. Two days later, in the 1,500 meter race walk Matthews' winning time of 6:18.02 placed him 55 seconds ahead of silver medalist Couts and cut 33 seconds off the old record time of 6:50.94, set by Ray Funkhouser of Virginia in 2001.

Matthews is a professor at Carroll College.