Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Usain Bolt, Athletics, Jamaica
Ryan Smart
A current sprinter believes he could have beaten Usain Bolt's 100 metre world record time of 9.58 - only for disaster to strike before a race.
Bolt ran his world record time at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, and holds the three fastest times in the history of 100 metres.
An eight-time Olympic champion, the Jamaican's time have never truly come close to being beaten 15 years on.
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In the top 25 times ever run in the 100 metres, only two have been set by sprinters in the last five years, with both being from the United States.
Trayvon Bromell and Fred Kerley ran 9.76 in 2021 and 2022 respectively, although both were assisted by wind.
Kerley, 29, has been a prominent figure in the event over the past two Olympics, winning silver in Tokyo in 2021 before claiming bronze in Paris in 2024.
Marcell Lamont Jacobs won the 2021 race with a time of 9.80, while Kerley ran 9.84 and backed that up with a season best of 9.81 in Paris.
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Fans might have expected an even quicker time from Kerley given how confident he was in the lead-up to Paris.
In May, he tweeted: "World record next time I touch the 100 metres."
The world record attempt was supposed to happen at the New York City Grand Prix in June. But the 29-year-old didn't even start the race.
Kerley twice slipped on his blocks, before then walking out of the arena and therefore voiding his participation. While many believed he hadn't been disqualified, the American later revealed that was not the case.
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He said that there was an issue with his blocks, and he was denied the chance to have them replaced.
He told reporters: "As a veteran, they were just taking too long. I was requesting for some new blocks. One of my pads was broken.
"I slipped the first time and I slipped the second time. It wasn't about to happen for a third time. I was not DQ'd."
During an appearance on the 'Ready Set Go' podcast in September with former US sprinter Justin Gatlin, Kerley was questioned about the incident, and explained why he believed he could have beaten Bolt's record that day before he left the arena.
He explained: "That [tweet in May] was not putting people on notice. The next time I stepped on the track, it was supposed to be a world record because what I did in training, it was stupid.
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"If you translate that to the track meet, it would have been good. But New York happened, the way it's supposed to, for my success. That's how I knew I was getting back to Fred Kerley."
Kerley also spoke about the Paris 2024 final, and believes that the athletes were held too long to prevent what he thinks would have been 'something the world was not ready to watch'.
"I feel like we waited too long.
"My heart was beating, beating, beating fast. I'm ready to run. And then it just went away... you probably would have seen a faster race out of everybody.
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"The 9.7s, even the person that ran 9.91 [Oblique Seville, who finished eighth], we all could have ran something that the world was not ready to watch. It would have happened five minutes earlier."