Two F-5s fly over Eugene in the afternoon, and then the judge calls for silence.
Eight sprinters line up in the studs, and Hayward Field falls silent. American athletics has put a lot on the line. Four of these eight finalists are local. And most of these Americans have their story.
Fred Kerley has the best mark of the year (9.76) and was formerly a four-hundred-year-old (bronze at the 2019 Doha World Cups). The fact distinguishes him: the older he is, the more he cuts the distance. Weirdo.
Trayvon Bromell has been indoor world champion in 1960 (Portland 2016).
Christian Coleman has a world gold (2019) and a silver (2017), and also a one-year suspension for skipping three anti-doping controls.
Yes, American speed has a lot at stake.
This is an old vindication: the eternal Usain Bolt is no longer there and Marcell Jacobs, the Italian who had turned everything upside down a year ago, with his gold in Tokyo 2020, is limping, and who, in pain, renounces the semifinal and the final.
(...)
The F-5s pass.
And then shhhhhh.
Silence.
Fred Kerley (27) is the strong man moving through the mid lanes. He is 1.91 m tall and weighs 93 kilos and sports a magnificent four-wheel drive. He looks like Linford Christie.
From one side of Kerley appears Marvin Bracy. It is the fourth American, and it is smaller and more compact. On the other corner, on 8th Street, Bromell waits.
Shhhhht.
And then the shot.
And the noise.
The Americans have a lot at stake, now that the Jamaicans are slackening, and also the British, and also the Canadians!
Now it flies.
Coleman is a bullet, he starts first, jumps off the studs in 0.104 thousandths, considerably faster than Kerley, who is taller and needs a few thousandths more (0.119).
Until there, until the first ten meters, Coleman commands.
Then Kerley stretches, shaking his shoulders and keeping his knees open, but that doesn't affect him at all, since he is relentless in his determination and has just won the Trials on this very stage, the charming Hayward Field, and the public is in agreement. your part: we will soon tell your story.
Kerley flies, who shares the lead with Bracy in the 40m and manages the pressure until the end, no matter how much Bracy squeezes him on one side and Bromell on the other, on the side, very close to the stands.
How Hayward Field shouts!
He screams for ten seconds, and then even more, as soon as Kerley hangs on and hangs on and grabs the gold at 9s86, and Bracy overwhelms him but keeps the silver (9s88), and as hard as he goes he blows away a cameraman who had gotten lost in the curve.
Bromell signs 9s88, same as Bracy, but the marker hands him the bronze, and the guy lunges at Bracy and knocks him down on the tartan and pretends to hit him, like he's beating him, and Bracy, happy with his silver, he lets himself be beaten
And all this, Coleman looks at him from a distance, kneeling on the synthetic, disappointed and overshadowed, since he was sixth, blocked in the last meters, he has not dropped below 10 seconds (10:01).
Statistics remind us that Americans haven't scored a hat-trick in the 100 since Helsinki 1983 and Tokyo 1991. Those were the days of Carl Lewis, Calvin Smith and Leroy Burrell.
The times when American speed flew over the world, just like its F-5s.
The times that have returned, to the happiness of the people of Oregon, who go to dinner with satisfaction in the body.
(...)
And now, Kerley's story.
His story is common, and has overwhelmed the hearts of athletics fans, because this man comes from the well.
His father has spent many years in prison and his mother was never there, and that is why that two-year-old boy, little Fred, had gone to live with his aunt Virginia (he calls her Meme) in Austin (Texas).
Fred had done it, and his five brothers had done it, and six other cousins, thirteen people under one roof.
-My aunt came to bring forward another two or three generations after ours. In total, about 25 kids, Kerley says.
He also says that the education that Meme had given him, his sense of commitment and his deep faith, had made him a believer who attends church every Wednesday and every Sunday, who does good for others and is grateful for the blessings that has given him life.
-I have met many young people gifted with great talent. I keep in touch with them through Facebook or Instagram. Many of them have been lost, they have been carried away by what their older brothers did. I said to myself: 'I'm not going to end up like this. Neither like my father, nor like them. And here I am.
To remind him, he has tattooed Psalm 104 on his arm.
-Why did I cut the distance, why did I go down from 400 to 100? Because in the end, everyone comes to behold the fastest man in the world. And that's why I did it, because he wanted to be the fastest man in the world.
