By Charles Jerome.
South Africa’s Akani Simbine will have to fight another day for a global individual medal, missing out on a place in the top 3 men’s 100m final having qualified from his semifinal heat as a potential dark horse who could spring an upset against the American favourites.
Simbine qualified for the final, sneaking in on Trayvon Bromell who did not detect him hanging on his left shoulder. Bromell was thinking he had sorted out what was happening to his left angle, only for the former African Record holder to pounce on an opportunity and took the victory.
It was the first legal sub 10s Simbine would be running this season, winning heat 1 of men’s 100m semis in a time of 9.97s. Bromell also clocked an identical 9.97s, but he had to settle for 2nd in the race which was enough to book a place in the final. For his effort winning his 100m, Simbine became the only African to qualify for the 100m final on Day 2 of the World, and it was his third consecutive 100m final since his first in 2017 when he finished 5th in London. His experiences running at a major championships was coming to bear.
Being up against it and running against a field that had four Americans in the final, it was almost herculean beating them in front of their roaring home crowd. It was not to be though, as Simbine finished out of a medal zone, coming in 5th in 10.01s behind an American 1-2-3 sweep.
This was not place he would have wanted to be, he had come close on numerous occasions, but have constantly fallen short. He might possibly be running out of time to start converting his 4 & 5th place finishes into medals.
Earlier in the semis, the trio of Nigeria’s Favour Ashe, Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala & Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo all competed in heat 3, but none of them put together a good race plan that would have seen any one of them nick the next best two times needed after the top two automatic spots from the heats.
Incidentally all three of them finished in a ranking order just a place above each other. Ashe finished 4th in 10.12s, while Omanyala came in 5th getting to the line in 10.14s, one-hundredth of a second faster than Tebogo who was 6th in 10.16s.
Tebogo ran a World Junior Record of 9.94s in the heats, and he was fancied to make the final, but he started slowly, and was left with a lot to claw back, and it was already too late. Ashe started brightly, but his top end speed has been the greatest, floundering with some metres, opening a vista for other athletes to always out-dip him on the line.
Before eventually making the trip to the US, Omanyala had hoped he could make his first global final after being the first Kenyan to make the 100m semis at an Olympic Game, but the arduous journey he had endured to get to Eugene, cost him dearly.
“I tried to push myself but I guess my body did not want me to push. But no regrets, just a lesson. It was definitely worth coming here, at least I got to the semifinals. Next time, I hope to do better. I have Commonwealth Games in two weeks so I believe to do much better there,” Omanyala said after the race.
Some of these athletes will meet themselves again in a few weeks, this time it will be at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where they will rekindle the African sprinting rivalry.