There was history in the making at the weekend for Adam Gemili at the Bedford International Games. The European outdoor 200m champion ran sub-10 seconds for the 100m, becoming the first British athlete to both go under ten seconds for the short sprint and also sub-20 seconds for the 200m. His achievement was tempered somewhat by the illegal wind reading for record purposes, but nonetheless it demonstrated that he is coming into peak form as the major championships of the summer approach.
Wind assistance too high for 'legal' times
With the wind assistance at Bedford being logged at a blustery +3.7 metres-per-second, Gemili's time of 9.97 seconds 'failed' the allowable limit of +2.0m/s by some way.
However, he had earlier run a swift 10.12 seconds in the heats, suggesting that it should not be long before he approaches a legal sub-10 seconds time. With the World Championships in Beijing not until the end of August, he has plenty of time to go even faster than his legal best of 10.04 seconds from Mannheim last year.
Building on last year
21-year-old Gemili is world class at the 100m, as he demonstrated by taking a silver medal at last year's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. On that occasion he was only defeated by one of the multitude of exceptional sprinters that Jamaica are currently producing, with Kemar Bailey-Cole being the man to take gold.
Favours the longer sprint
If anything, Gemili would probably favour the longer sprint as his emphatic success at the Euros indicated.
He will have no doubt had an eye on the recent results from the Diamond League meeting in Eugene, Oregon last week, where the Beijing favourite for the sprint double, Justin Gatlin was in action. The American recorded a world leading time for the 200m with his 19.68 seconds time. By comparison, the Blackheath and Bromley Harriers athlete's fastest 200m time is a highly respectable 19.98 seconds.
Previous sporting history
Gemili has only been a full-time athlete since 2012. Up until then he had previously split his time between Athletics and football, having been a former defender with Dagenham & Redbridge and also spending time in the Chelsea youth academy. He excels on the bigger stages of athletics, having won gold at the 2012 World Junior Championships over the 100m, besides his senior successes in 2014.
