It’s the natural path for any sprinter: start with the 100 or 200 meters, consolidate that position, then think about the 400 meters. This is how, for example, Michael Johnson became one of the greatest in world athletics. And there are also cases in the middle and in the background, always with the elevator ascending in terms of distances. Then there are exceptions. Usually without great success. And exceptions within exceptions with results can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Fred Kerley, 27, became one of those rare situations, with a turning point in his career caused by the stoppage due to the pandemic and by a risky bet that many questioned. Last year, in Tokyo, he managed to become Olympic runner-up just behind Marcell Jacobs. This day, He is world champion in the 100 meters.
No man has ever won a World Championship medal in the 100m and 400m.
Fred Kerley became the first to do so! ???????? pic.twitter.com/q2I1U5xK7d
— Track & Field Gazette (@Athleticsglobe) July 17, 2022
Until that turning point, Kerley excelled above all in the 400 meters. He won the 2018 Diamond League over that distance, won a bronze medal at the 2019 World Championships, was champion and runner-up in the 4x400m relay at both the indoor and outdoor World Championships. In 2021, at the National Championships qualifying for the Olympic Games, he was entered in the 100, 200 and 400 meters but ankle swelling forced reprioritization even for the three laps he would have to do in the 400. Despite being his specialty, even being the distance where he had the eighth best time in history, he ended up staying alone in the 100. With little time to work he qualified and, with 9.84, has not just won gold in Tokyo for the best race in the history of the transalpine, which broke the European record (9.80).
With that, the American became the third athlete to do the 100 meters in less than ten seconds, the 200 meters in less than 20 seconds and the 400 meters in less than 44 seconds, something that had only been achieved by the South African Wayde van Niekerk. and the American Michael Norman. . Something that, in the first years of his life, It seemed like a utopian scenario in the face of the difficulties he faced.
What race ????@fkerley99 ???????? takes 100m world gold in 9.86 and leads a 1-2-3 USA on home soil ????#WorldAthleticsChamps @usatf pic.twitter.com/tvSf11pbEK
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) July 17, 2022
Born and raised in Taylor, a small town in Texas, Fred and his siblings moved in with their aunt, Virginia Kerley, at the age of two. “My father was in prison, my mother took wrong paths in life. Without my aunt I wouldn’t be an athlete, I don’t know what would have become of me. I was a baby at the time, I didn’t know what was going on around me. Meme, as we call her, raised her children, her brother’s children, and her sister’s children. In total we were 13 children under the same roof”, she explained in an interview in 2019. “If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be here talking right now. She sacrificed her life for me for my brothers, my sisters and my cousins”, he highlighted after winning the title in Eugene.
When a photo says it all.
Marvin Bracy hugs his teammate Fred Kerley after winning silver in the men’s 100m final.❤️#WorldAthleticsChamps pic.twitter.com/5bkfDAzOvY
— The Olympics (@Olympics) July 17, 2022
“In my adolescence I saw many deviate from the correct path, among them family and very close friends. I have seen many gifted adolescents who do not develop as they should. I still see them on Instagram and remember how talented they were. They were very good, but suddenly, after finishing high school, they followed the same path as their older brothers. I thought different. Since I was little I convinced myself that it couldn’t be like that, that I didn’t want to end up like them. He wanted to study, he wanted to travel the world, he wanted to go further. Athletics allowed that and it was my aunt who helped in this whole process, ”she added about the complicated origins. For this reason, among the 12 tattoos he has (the first, a psalm, done when he was only 12 years old in a place with minimal sanitary conditions), the smallest and shortest one he has always stands out: “Meme”, in honor of his aunt Virginia: “He changed my life, he made my life and he will always be my strength. That’s why I still call him every day.”
“The big moment for me was when my aunt adopted me as a little boy. At the time, my mom and dad were in trouble and at one point it looked like my other four siblings and I were going to split up. But my aunt, Virginia, took us in.” @fkerley99https://t.co/jzwNsCxKkC pic.twitter.com/yS42OqdSOt
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) April 8, 2018
Even so, and within an innate talent for sports that he combined with his studies, athletics was not his first love. Not even the second, it should be added: even before entering college, he was coaching and playing football (the big loss) and basketball. However, and in the antechamber of choosing his faculty among the invitations he had, a broken collarbone changed all plans. He came almost by accident to athletics and speed but that was what allowed him to turn professional in 2017.
Fred Kerley ???????? is the 100m World Champion!!????????
He wins the title in 9.86s and leads an American finish 1-2-3 as Marvin Bracy ???????? finished second in 9.88s and Trayvon Bromell also won bronze in 9.88s!
AN AMERICAN SWEEP!!???????????? pic.twitter.com/48WqL4yRwS
— Track & Field Gazette (@Athleticsglobe) July 17, 2022
“We said we were going to achieve it and we did it”, he stressed in the first interview still on the track after the victory while the public chanted “United States! USA! USA!”. And we did it, in the plural, because for the first time in more than three decades the Americans managed to get on the podium (something that Jamaica also did, but in the women’s category, with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce beating Shericka Jackson and Olympic champion Elaine Thompson), with Marvin Bracy winning the silver medal and Trayvon Bromell taking the bronze – in 1991, in Tokyo, Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell and Dennis Mitchell had done it. The opportunity to approach Usain Bolt’s record was a long way off, posting a better time in the qualifiers (9.79) than in the final (9.84), but a personal best of 9.76 that puts him seventh fastest allows him to at least to aspire to the Olympic title in Paris-2024. All in the name of Meme.
History repeated itself in the 100m in @WCHoregon22 last night when the USA swept the board ????
1983
????Carl Lewis????????
????Calvin Smith????????
???? Emmit King ????????1991
????Carl Lewis????????
????Leroy Burrell????????
????Dennis Mitchell????????2022
????Fred Kerley????????
????Marvin Bracy????????
????Trayvon Bromell???????? pic.twitter.com/frmeMonzCa— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) July 17, 2022
Source: Observadora
