Sani Brown Narrowly Misses out on 100 Final; Breaks Personal Best, Japan Record at an Olympics

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:36 JST, August 5, 2024

PARIS — Japan sprinter Abdul Hakim Sani Brown failed to reach the men’s 100-meter final at the Paris Olympics on Sunday, despite lowering his personal best to 9.96 seconds.

The 25-year-old finished fourth in the third semifinal heat. The top two finishers in each semifinal and the next two fastest overall advanced to the eight-man final.

In his nine-man semifinal, Sani Brown had the fifth-fastest reaction time. “I was in good shape this time, and I started the race with all my energy,” he said.

He began to fall behind in the latter stages of the race. “I was told that I would be able to keep up if I ran my own race, but I overstrode a little.”

After the first two semifinals, the benchmark for qualifying outside the top two was set at 9.93. In the third semifinal, Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson and America’s Fred Kerley finished in 9.80 and 9.84, respectively. Sani Brown finished fourth in the semifinal, and 10th overall, to miss out on a final berth by three-hundredths of a second.

At the 2023 World Athletics Championships, Sani Brown ran 9.97 in the semifinals, matching his personal best at the time.

In his first-round heat on Saturday, Sani Brown broke the record for a Japanese athlete at the Olympics, with a 10.02. “I’ll keep going up and up,” he declared before breaking the record again in the semifinals.

“The gap [with the top athletes] has narrowed, but the overall level is rising quickly, and I feel deeply that it is not enough just to catch up little by little,” he said.