OREGON (Reuters) - Fred Kerley led the charge as the U.S. enjoyed its first sweep of the men’s 100 meters final in 31 years at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
“We said we were going to do it and we did it,” Kerley said in the on-track interview.
Kerley powered through the line to finish in 9.86 seconds and beat both Marvin Bracy and the 2021 U.S. champion, Trayvon Bromell, by less than 0.02 seconds. The difference between second and third was 0.002.
It marked the first American sweep at the worlds since Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell and Dennis Mitchell went gold-silver-bronze at the 1991 championships in Tokyo.
“It’s amazing,” said Burrell. “And honestly, I wouldn’t have expected less from the group. This is one of the best groups of US sprinters we’ve had in years.”
The race brought back memories of times when the U.S. dominated the track game in the same way Jamaica and Usain Bolt did for nearly a decade starting in 2008.
Back in those days, Lewis was a star and Burrell and a few others certainly filled the stands. That was also an era marred by doping.
This one felt more like a bunch of comeback stories and “I told you so’s.”
Kerley, a 27-year-old Texan, came into Eugene as the favorite the only sprinter to crack 9.8 seconds this year. His reward is a title in an event he didn’t start investing time in until the lead-up to last year’s Olympics.
In an interview on former US sprinter Rae Edwards’ webcast earlier this year, Kerley explained the reason for the move down in distance.
“At the end of the day, nobody really comes to watch anything besides ‘the fastest man in the world,’” he said. “So if you ask me what I want to be, I want to be the fastest man in the world.”
Now he is a part of the fastest team in the world, too.
The runner-up, Bracy, was a scholarship football player who left Florida State to pursue track, then went back to the gridiron for a couple of unsuccessful tryouts in the NFL, and now has a silver medal.
“I went to play football for three years, obviously that didn’t work out,” Bracy said. “So to come back to do this, it just means everything.”
The medals are certain to ramp up expectations for this weekend’s 4x100m relay.
Kerley will be the leader of that team. He finished second at Tokyo 2020 behind Italy’s Marcell Jacobs.
Jacobs has been bothered by a glute muscle problem this season and was a late withdrawal from the semifinals. Canadian Olympic bronze medalist Andre De Grasse, diagnosed with COVID-19 recently, finished fifth in the same heat.