Fred Kerley is the 100m world champion, completing an extraordinary journey to the title of the fastest man in the world.
Kerley, the 27-year-old American who won silver at the Tokyo Olympics, won Saturday night’s men’s crown jewel event at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon. He won in 9.86 seconds, leading a sweep of U.S. medals ahead of Marvin Bracy and Trayvon Bromell, who ran 9.88 each.
He marked the first U.S. medal sweep in the men’s 100-meter world since 1991 and the first in any event at the World Championships since 2007.
Kerley overtook Bracy on his left in the last 10 yards.
The same Fred Kerley who was considered a 400-meter sprinter until early last year. The same Fred Kerley who nine years ago joined the South Plains Community College track team. The same Fred Kerley who would never have chased the sprint if he hadn’t broken his collarbone in the last football game of his high school career in Texas.
The same Fred Kerley who has the words “aunt” and “Meme” tattooed inside his biceps.
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“She was two years old when I first moved in with her, a little kid who didn’t know what was going on around her,” Kerley wrote in 2019. “My dad ended up in jail, my mom took the wrong turns. in life, which meant that Aunt Virginia was the only one who could take care of me and my four brothers.Meme, as she is best known, raised her children, her brother’s children and us with 13 children all living under the same roof. He also raised them two or three generations after me, and still raises them now: 25 children in total. “
Kerley said Aunt Virginia sometimes went without food to make sure he and his siblings ate.
Kerley experienced more setbacks as he transformed into a world-class sprinter. When he was a sophomore at South Plains, he felt pain in his legs halfway through anchoring a relief.
“I continued before falling over the finish line when I realized I would break my quad,” he said, according to World Athletics. “He had a hole in his leg and could put his finger in the hole.”
Kerley still arrived at Texas A&M as a transfer. In 2017 he was a senior, lowering his personal mark of 400 m from 45.10 to 43.70, becoming the team of the world championships and finishing the year as the second fastest man in the world in the world. event.
“I became the elite working my ass,” Kerley said, according to Olympics.com.
Last year, Kerley drew attention by competing primarily in the 100 and 200 meters. Eventually, he chose these two events in the Olympics, and fell to 400 m due to an ankle injury.
“My ankle was swollen,” he said, according to Athletics Weekly. “I decided at the last minute to run the 100 and 200 meters, knowing I couldn’t do the laps. [in the 400m] as I wanted “.
It bore fruit. Kerley won the 100m silver at the Olympics in his debut at the World Distance Championships. He started 2021 with a personal best 100m mark of 10.49 of his South Plains days. He finished it with 9.84 in the Olympic final.
This year, he ran 9.76 and 9.77 in a two-hour period at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships last month. On Friday at the World Championships, he ran 9.79, the fastest time of the first round in a world championship.
Like Kerley, Bracy and Bromell have their own stories from a few years so far.
In 2013, Bracy left the state of Florida football program after his first year in the red jersey to become a professional on the court, a year before the Seminoles won their last national title.
Unexpectedly he formed the 2016 Olympic team, eliminated in the semifinals in Rio, and then hit football once again. He worked for the Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers in 2017, but did not play any regular season games. He was briefly a member of the Seattle Seahawks in 2018 and the Orlando Apollos of the AAF in 2019. He returned to the track in 2020, spending nearly three years between races. He is now on the podium of an outdoor world championship for the first time at 28 years old.
Last year, Bromell ran the fastest 100 meters in the world before and after the Olympics, but in Tokyo he was eliminated in the semifinals. If he had won any medals in Japan, he would have scored an all-time rebound. Bromell was kicked out of the Rio Olympics in a chair. He completed three races in total in 2017, 2018 and 2019 due to injuries and was considered finished.
Italian Marcell Jacobs, the stunning Olympic gold medalist, retired before Saturday’s semi-finals due to injuries to both legs. Jacobs has been held back from illness and injury since winning the 60-meter indoor world title in March.
The World Championships continue Sunday with the women’s 100-meter finals and the American favorites for the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles and women’s weightlifting and pole vault and hammer throw.
Also on Saturday, Chase Ealey became the first woman in the United States to win a world weightlifting title. Ealey recovered from a fifth-place finish in the Olympics to get the second-best throw in U.S. history this season. On Her Turf has more information about Ealey here.
Ethiopian Letesenbet Gidey, a world record 5,000m, 10,000m and half marathon, achieved her first world gold in the 10,000m. Gidey, expelled from school as a teenager for refusing to run in physical education class, resisted 5,000-meter world champion Hellen Obiri of Kenya in a furious five-woman fight on the final lap of the end of 25 laps.
Ethiopian-born Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan was fourth, a year after winning gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 m and bronze in the 1,500 m in an unprecedented Olympic triple and then made an eight-month low season. Where Her Turf has more about the women’s 10,000m here.
“I really needed a break after the Tokyo Olympics,” Hassan said. “I crashed mentally. I didn’t even mind running.”
Chinese Wang Jianan won the men’s long jump, advancing four-time Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece by jumping from sixth to first in his sixth and final jump.
Polish hammer thrower Paweł Fajdek became the third person to win five outdoor world titles in an individual event, joining Ukrainian pole vault Sergey Bubka (six titles) and German discus thrower Lars Riedel.
All favorites advanced to the women’s 100-meter semifinals, including two-time Jamaica 100-meter Olympic champions Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.87) and Elaine Thompson-Herah (11.15).
Elsewhere in the standings, notables who were eliminated included 2019 world high jump bronze medalist Vashti Cunningham, 110m hurdles American champion Daniel Roberts, who crashed while leading his first round, and the U.S. 1500m Olympic test champion Elle St. Pierre.
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