How the World’s Fastest Men Battled for Gold in 10 Seconds (Published 2021) (2024)

TOKYO — There is now a successor to Usain Bolt. Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy ran a 9.80-second 100 meters to win the gold medal on Sunday night at Tokyo Olympic Stadium. It marked the first time since 2004 that anyone other than Bolt, who retired in 2017, has been the Olympic champion in the men’s event.

Without Bolt, it was a wide-open race: Nearly everyone in the starting blocks had a shot at victory. A false start caused Zharnel Hughes of Britain to be disqualified, and Enoch Adegoke of Nigeria did not finish; the remaining six competitors all clocked times under 10 seconds.

Fred Kerley of the United States won silver, four-hundredths of a second behind Jacobs, and Andre de Grasse of Canada (9:89) won bronze, as he did in Rio. All three of the top finishers achieved personal best times.

Jacobs’s time was 0.17 seconds off Bolt’s Olympic record of 9.63 that he set in London in 2012, and 0.22 seconds off Bolt’s world record of 9.58 that he set in 2009. The last European to win gold in the 100 was Britain’s Linford Christie in Barcelona in 1992. (Jacobs, who was born in Texas to an Italian mother, ran for Italy.)

Explosive start for Kerley

Kerley blasted out of the blocks faster than any of the runners, reacting with a time of 0.128 seconds. Jacobs’s reaction time was 0.161, the second slowest of the seven starters. During the acceleration phase, the first 30 meters or so, Kerley was holding off the pack.

Jacobs gains ground

Jacobs erased his early deficit in a hurry, then stayed just behind Kerley through the second 25 meters. Jacobs was running faster than anyone at this point in the race. But Kerley had been a 400-meter runner until switching over to the 100 this year. Specialists in the 400 often make great finishers in the 100, so Kerley appeared to be in good shape.

Jacobs reaches 26.76 m.p.h.

But Jacobs increased his speed and drew even with Kerley midway through the race — and looked strong. His peak speed was 26.76 m.p.h. Jacobs, a former Italian long jump champion, had set an Italian 100-meter record in May, at 9.95, and then ran 9.94 in the heats here. He would need to run faster than he ever had over the last 50 meters if he wanted to win. In Lane 8, Adegoke pulled up with an apparent leg injury.

A gold, and a personal best, for Jacobs

In the final meters, Kerley could not hold off Jacobs, who was running the race of his life. With about five meters to go, it looked as if either runner could claim the gold. Kerley was running faster than Jacobs at this point. Both runners leaned hard into the finish line.

When the results were posted, Jacobs had raced more than a tenth of a second faster than he ever had before, setting a personal best and claiming both a gold medal and the unofficial title of the fastest man in the world.

Methodology

The Times recorded the position of every runner in a sequence of more than 100 photographs taken every five-hundredths of a second to determine the speed of each athlete throughout the race. Speeds were calculated by combining the positions of the athletes with timestamp information from the images.