Young gun: Adam Gemili rounds the bend as he smashes his personal best to reach the 200m final. Photo: Reuters
Adam Gemili and Usain Bolt will have at least one thing in common when they line up in adjacent lanes for Saturday’s 200 metres final at the World Championships in the Luzhniki Stadium.
They are the only 200m sprinters in history to have broken through the 20-second barrier while still in their teens after Gemili, still six weeks short of his 20th birthday, annihilated his lifetime best on Friday night to win his semi-final in 19.98sec, a time that he admitted afterwards had left him in a state of shock.
It makes him only the second British sprinter to dip under 20 seconds after John Regis, who achieved the feat twice in his career, the last time in 1994 when, aided by high altitude and a tailwind, he set a British record of 19.87sec. On Friday, Gemili had the wind blowing into his face.
After the race, Regis tweeted: “Young Adam Gemili is trying to break my British record. Great run 19.98. At last I have a colleague in the sub-20 club.”
It is a club that not even Linford Christie, Christian Malcolm or Darren Campbell were able to join, but Gemili has been on a fast track to sprinting stardom since his breakthrough last year when he won the junior world 100m crown in a championship record and reached the Olympic semi-finals at the age of 18.
Friday’s performance, which came just hours after he had lowered his previous personal best from 20.30 sec to 20.17 sec to win his first-round heat, confirms him as one of Britain’s most exciting young sprinters in years. – The Telegraph
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