MIAMI, FL — While everyone in Austin was looking to see Fred Kerley race in the 4x100m and 4x200m relay events at Texas Relays 2022, the Olympic silver medalist was busy running 9.99 seconds (-0.6 m/s) in Florida at the Miami Hurricanes Invitational on Saturday (26).
Kerley had been listed to feature alongside fellow Olympian Ronnie Baker on a Star Athletic relay squad that was slated to battle with some of the top collegiate athletes in Austin, this weekend.
Watch Fred Kerly Runs Season Opener Over 100m
However, the 26-year-old opted to remain in the Sunshine State to open his season over the 100 meters, which resulted in him producing his 11th sub-10 seconds clockings in legal wind in his short career of taking up the event seriously.
Thus far this season, Kerley has posted times of 20.04 secs for the 200m and 44.47 secs for the 400m, which currently are both world-leading marks, to go alongside his 9.99 secs performance in Miami.
“9.99 I take it,” Kerley wrote on his official Twitter account after the race.
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His 100m time is the second-fastest in the world in 2022 behind the swift 9.90 secs recorded by Benjamin Azamati of Texas A&M at Texas Relays 2022 on Friday at the Mike A. Myers Track and Soccer Stadium.
With the month of March wrapping up in a matter of days, Kerley, a super chilled and level-headed talented all-around sprinter, was pleased with how things have gone so far.
“Good month of March,” he added on Twitter. “44.4., 20.0., [and] 9.99.”
All three of those season performances have already met the qualifying standards for each event to the World Athletics Championships Oregon22, to be held in Eugene, USA, later this summer.
Kerley finished behind Italian American-born sprinter Lamont Jacobs in the 100m at the delayed 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, last summer after deciding to skip the 400m at the U.S. Olympic Trials and focused on the shorter sprinting events.
The former Texas A&M star, who is a 2017 four-time NCAA champion, owns personal bests of 9.84 secs for the 100m, 19.76 for the 200m, and 43.64 secs for the 400m.
Kerley is expected to be one of the toughest sprinters to beat in 2022, as he continues to strive for – and to echo the term in his own word, “greatness.”
Full results of the Miami Hurricanes Invitational
