Fred Kerley led a United States of America clean sweep in the men’s 100 metres final in the early hours of this morning in the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, while there was no Nigerian athlete in the race.
It is the first time since 1991 that the USA would claim all three men’s 100m medals, with Marvin Bracy finishing second and Trayvon Bromell third.
Kerley clocked 9.86 seconds to claim gold as Bracy took silver and Bromell bronze, both with 9.88 seconds, but Bracy edged it by two thousandths of a second in a photo finish.
A fourth American in the final, defending champion Christian Coleman, finished sixth.
Carl Lewis led clean sweeps in 1983 and 1991 but no nation has managed it since.
New world champion Kerley is one of only three men, along with South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk and fellow American Michael Norman, to have broken 10 seconds in the 100m, 20 seconds in the 200m and 44 seconds in the 400m.
And the 27-year-old is now the only man to have won medals at both 100m and 400m having finished third over one lap in 2019.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s dream of medals in the 100m, which the country used to be a top contender in, ended earlier in the day.
Raymond Ekevwo and Favour Ashe, Nigeria’s representatives, crashed out in the semi-finals and were spectators for the fast final.
Ekevwo finished dead last in Heat 1 of the semi-finals in 10.20s, in a race South Africa’s Akani Simbine won in 9.97s.
Ashe did a bit better than his compatriot, finishing fourth in Heat 2 in 10.12s and beating Africa’s fastest man Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala (10.14s), but the promising youngster just missed out on what would have been his first global final.
