When Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile on 6 May 1954 his friend and supporter Norris McWhirter stretched the announcement out almost beyond breaking point, proclaiming successively Bannister had run a meeting and track record and “subject to ratification,” an English native, British national, all-comers, European, British Empire and world record.
“The time was three,” McWhirter intoned as he reached crescendo, at which point the rest (presumably “minutes 59.4 seconds” – we’ll just have to take his word for it) was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.
When Lachlan Kennedy ran 9.98 seconds for 100 metres in Nairobi last weekend (31 May), his joy at breaking a significant barrier may have been as great as Bannister’s but he didn’t have a mate on the trackside public address (as far as we know). Nor was his time a meeting or track record, a national record, an area record or a Kenyan all-comers record. The British Empire having joined the dead parrot in no-longer existing, nor was it either an Empire or Commonwealth record.
Kennedy himself summed it up succinctly. And in a manner resonant with McWhirter’s announcement on that momentous mile occasion, it took just one number to do it.
“I can finally say I ran nine,” he summarised. Yes indeed, and just the second Australian to be able to say so. Patrick Johnson’s national record 9.93 may be living on borrowed time. As this columnist observed recently, Bannister is defined by the number three, uniquely so because he was the first to break four minutes. Now Lachie Kennedy joins Johnson in being defined by the number nine. With Usain Bolt’s world record 9.58 so far unchallenged, much less bettered, the Australian pair are likely to be nine-defined by this number for a while yet.
So, what does Kennedy’s performance mean. Many things but let’s have a stab at some. In absolute terms he ran his 9.98 in Nairobi which sits around 1800 metres above sea level. He ran into a 0.7 metres per second headwind. According to the wind/altitude conversions readily findable via your search engines, the two factors roughly cancel each other out though there is a slight net benefit.
The Kenyan all-comers record is held by America’s Trayvon Brommel who beat the third placegetter in Kennedy’s race, Ferdinand Omanyala, by 0.01 in the 2021 edition of the Keino Classic in 9.76. Splitting Kennedy and Omanyala last weekend was South Africa’s Paris Olympic relay gold medallist Bayanda Walaza. Omanyala’s PB is 9.77, Walaza, who won the 100 and 200 metres double at last year’s world U20 championships (beating Gout Gout in the latter), had run 9.94 the previous weekend. Very credible opposition, too.
Ten seconds for men’s 100 (or 11 for women’s) is also the benchmark for true world-class sprinting. Sub-10 puts a male sprinter in almost every Olympic and world championships final ever run (and, as they say, anything can happen in the final). The slight downer there is that the one final of the past four global championships where this did NOT apply was Paris24. It took times of 9.91, or faster, to take one of the two automatic final spots from the three semi-finals while 9.93 was the slower of the two non-automatic qualifiers. But 9.98 would have made the Tokyo20 Olympic final and the world championships final in Eugene and Budapest.
Twenty Feet from Stardom, a film which won the best documentary Oscar in 2014, details the experiences of the back-up singers (overwhelmingly female) who support some of the biggest names in popular music but for various reasons never quite attempt or complete the jump to individual stardom. Twenty feet refers to the distance they stand behind the stars.
At 10-second 100 metres speed an athlete covers about 10 metres per second, one metre per 0.1 seconds, 10 centimetres per 0.01. Before last weekend, with a 10.00 PB, Kennedy was 10 centimetres from stardom. Now, he is in the mix to make the final at the world championships later this year. Not yet superstar status, but in the constellation of potential medallists.
Another positive factor in Kennedy’s sub-10 is it represents the continuation of an upward trend in Australian men’s (and women’s) sprints. Again, Kennedy alluded to this himself in his post-race comments. In short succession Gout Gout has run two just-windy 9.99 times of 9.99 at the national championships, a resurgent Rohan Browning 10.01 to edge Kennedy (also 10.01) to win the senior national title and Kennedy has taken the silver medal in the 60 metres at the world indoor championships and dipped under 10.
Added to that is the 37.87 national record in the 4×100 relay at this year’s Sydney Track Classic. The group of young sprinters – men and women – is nothing if not collegiate and as Kennedy said in Nairobi they all take pleasure from the performance of the others. The men’s 60, 200 and 4×100 national records and the women’s 60, 100 and 4×100 national records have all been broken since the start of 2024 (some of them more than once). Things are bubbling along very nicely indeed.
Australian women have done fantastically well in Olympic and world championships 100 metres with gold medallists in Marjorie Jackson and Betty Cuthbert and further medallists including Marlene Mathews and Raelene Boyle. Men’s pickings have been slim to the point of malnourishment. Stan Rowley was third in the 100 (and 60 and 200) at the Paris 1900 Games, John Treloar a finalist in Helsinki in 1952. Hec Hogan’s bronze in the Melbourne Olympic 100 is our only medal in that event since Rowley and Paul Narracott made the 100 final in the first world championships in 1983.
Nothing since. Can Lachlan Kennedy – anyone, really – turn that around in Tokyo this year.
