EUGENE, Ore. (AP)—Before the race, U.S. fighter jets zoomed over the stadium. Then, down on the track, Americans flashed a different kind of speed.
Fred Kerley led the charge Saturday on an All-American night for track and field, headlining the first U.S. sweep of the sport’s marquee event, the men’s 100, in 31 years at the worlds. It placed a red-white-and-blue stamp on Day 2 of the first championships held on American soil.
“We said we were going to do it and we did it,” Kerley said in the on-track interview, moments after the crowd had finished chanting “USA! USA! USA!”
Kerley powered through the line to finish in 9.86 seconds and beat both the leaning 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 world meet since Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell and Dennis Mitchell went gold-silver-bronze in 1991 in Tokyo.
“It’s amazing,” said Burrell, who was on hand. “And honestly, I wouldn’t have expected less from the group. This is one of the best groups of U.S. sprinters we’ve had in years.”
This All-American burst of speed came moments after the jets presaged the evening’s main event by blazing over Hayward Stadium, the still-cozy confines on the University of Oregon campus that were renovated to bring the championships to the U.S. for the first time.
The race itself 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. Some might call that the good old days—Lewis was a star and Burrell and few others certainly filled the stands. That was also a time of the sullen track superstar and an era marred by doping.
This one felt more like a bunch of comeback stories and “I told ya so’s.”
“It’s amazing to be around the greats,” Kerley said. “They did it in ’91, and now we did it in ’22.”
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 leadup to last year’s Olympics.
In an interview on former U.S. sprinter Rae Edwards’s 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—and 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. Now, he has a silver medal.
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Source: www.si.com
