2023-08-20 06:08:11
To this list already provided, was added the Jamaican Oblique Seville, author of the best time of the series on Saturday evening, in 9 sec 86, equaled personal best, in front of Lyles (9.95).
The pre-season had been animated by the prospect of enticing direct confrontations – rare in athletics – between the two strong men of the moment on the straight line: Jacobs, the Olympic and European champion in title, and Kerley, the champion of the outgoing world. But following the first rounds at a distance on social networks, those expected on the track before Budapest never took place.
The fault of Jacobs (28), who arrived with only one race on the clock since the start of the summer because of back pain: an unspecified 100m in 10 sec 21, finished in seventh place in June in Paris.
On Saturday evening, he narrowly passed the cut of the series, in 10 sec 15, which represents the 19th time of the qualifiers for the semi-finals. “I made a lot of mistakes, especially in the first part of the race. (…) I really don’t know if I have the form to compete with these fantastic athletes,” he admits.
Kerley 4th performer in 2023
“It hasn’t been an easy season, there have been a lot of concerns, doubts, worries”, agrees the Italian sprinter, without landmarks and without rhythm.
Asked before the competition to be on a scale of 1 to 10, Jacobs preferred to decline. “I’m in good shape, but maybe there have been too many injuries in the last two seasons.”
A year ago, before adorning himself with European gold in Munich (Germany), Jacobs had seen his start to the summer season, and his Worlds-2022, marred by muscle injuries to both thighs.
As for Kerley, who climbed to the top step of a 100% American world podium at home in Eugene (Oregon) last summer (ahead of Bracy and Bromell, absent in Budapest), he does not seem untouchable in 2023.
His best time of the summer, 9 sec 88 run from his return to Japan at the end of May, makes him “only” the fourth best performer in the world of the season. And the 28-year-old Texan remains on a defeat before Budapest, narrowly, in mid-July in Chorzow (Poland).
Ahead of Kerley in the 2023 world reports, and necessarily contenders for the podium of the queen race in Budapest – in addition to Seville -, the Briton Zharnel Hughes, holder of the MPM in 9 sec 83, national record which belonged for thirty years to Linford Christie, and the Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala, one hundredth behind (9.84).
Africa time?
What if the queen race finally smiled on Africa?
To the credit of Omanyala (27), who has never had a world final before, the muscular Kenyan from rugby is the only one to have run twice in less than 9 sec 90 this season.
Like him, two other African sprinters hope to join in the debates: the South African Akani Simbine (29), third in time on Saturday (9.97), and the young Batswana Letsile Tebogo (20), behind in the series (10.11, 13th time).
Accustomed to places of honor, fourth or fifth in the last two Olympic finals and the last three world finals on the straight, it was Simbine who had beaten Kerley in Chorzow. The latest in a series of four 100m victories, including two in the Diamond League.
Never has an African sprinter been crowned world champion in the 100m. World gold has not escaped the United States or Jamaica since the surprise victory of Saint Kitts and Nevis rider Kim Collins twenty years ago in Paris.
Lyles’ ambitions will have to be tamed to change that. The reigning double world champion in the half-lap is tackling the 100m-200 double with “good reason to think” that he is “capable of doing something new”, he dares . The 26-year-old American repeated aiming for 9 sec 65. More than two tenths less than his personal best which dates back to 2019. And only seven hundredths slower than the world record of the legendary Usain Bolt.
1692517898
#Jacobs #Kerley #Omanyala #Lyles #crowd #100m #contenders
