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Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder

What’s Going On In The Men’s 100m? 🫣

Trayvon Bromell has re-entered the chat.

A few weeks ago, we pondered what was going on with the women’s 100m this season. Since then, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden got a fast track and a legal wind in her third Grand Slam effort, and came away with a world-leading 10.73. There’s not much else of note to report from the Jamaican veterans or Jefferson-Wooden’s training partner, Sha’Carri Richardson. So right now, it’s looking more and more like the Olympic bronze medalist is now the woman to beat… until Julien Alfred finally opens up in her signature event.

This time last month, the men weren’t telling nearly as interesting a story. Noah Lyles was a mainstay on the podcasting circuit but not the track. Kenny Bednarek was dominating Grand Slam Track. And Akani Simbine was winning Diamond League races on the other side of the globe.

Fast forward to this past weekend, and all that was still true. But a few youngsters have registered significant blips on the radar, like 19-year-old South African Bayanda Walaza and collegians Abdul-Rasheed Saminu of Ghana and South Florida and American Jordan Anthony of Arkansas. Those two are set up for an epic clash at NCAAs this weekend, and on Hayward Field’s historically fast track for sprints, Christian Coleman’s 9.82 collegiate record could be in jeopardy.

All the while, a tectonic shift had already begun. We just hadn’t realized it yet. On May 24, two-time Olympian Trayvon Bromell ran his first 100m of the season at the PURE Athletics Invitational, winning his heat in 9.91 and skipping out on the final. For the 29-year-old who won his first global medal in Beijing in 2015, it was his first sub-10 since 2022, and just 0.01 off Simbine’s then-world lead of 9.90.

Two weeks later, Trayvon took his talents to Italy. The Golden Gala in Rome lined him up alongside Fred Kerley, Courtney Lindsey, and Ferdinand Omanyala, to name a few, and all of a sudden Bromell was back in the deep end of international competition after only racing Stateside all winter and spring. Would the bright lights of the Diamond League expose Bromell’s early-season performance as fraudulent?

Quite the opposite, in fact. Within a second of the gun going off, Bromell had put a step on Kerley, instantly reminding viewers why he’s a former World Indoor champ over 60 meters. By halfway, he was opening up a gap on the entire field and even had a comfortable enough margin to ease up over the finish line. It was an utterly dominant performance over world-class competition, and it looked easy.

Then the time popped up: 9.84 seconds (with a sizable but legit 1.1 tailwind). In an instant, Bromell wasn’t just back; he was the world leader, running his fastest time since the semifinals of USAs three years prior and looking every inch the generational talent New Balance saw when they signed him a decade earlier. Bromell has had more than his fair share of injuries, including multiple surgeries and torn Achilles-es, but when he’s healthy, he’s the sixth-fastest man in history, owns two World medals, and is ultimately the grown-up version of the first junior in history to break 10 seconds in the 100m.

Of course, Bromell isn’t going to walk to a gold medal in Tokyo just because he ran a strong race in Rome in June. Two days later, Olympic silver medalist Kishane Thompson won the Racers Grand Prix in his home nation of Jamaica in 9.88, his fastest time of the year so far and his second straight win. Visually, Thompson is the polar opposite of Bromell, all power and push to Bromell’s tip-toeing grace. But they have a lot in common: they’re both strong starters who don’t bother much with the 200m, and they’re both prodigious young talents whose biggest enemy has historically been the fragility of their own bodies.

As the calendar flips to June, we’re starting to see on the men’s side what we’d hoped to see on the women’s: the late debutants are coming around, and all of a sudden, the field feels a lot more crowded. And the farther we get into summer, the more unavoidable head-to-head clashes will become. 

Either Simbine’s win streak (currently at six races) will come to an end, or he’ll continue racking up bigger and better victories as he bulldozes over the rest of the Diamond League circuit. Even if Thompson never races outside Jamaica for the rest of the summer, he can’t turn his silver medal from Paris into Tokyo gold without going through four American rivals first. And, quite simply, Bromell will need to manage to stay healthy in September, where he will meet Bednerek head-to-head for the first time since the final in 2022—assuming they don’t face off elsewhere first.

The best part of these exciting developments is that they’re the result of more and more athletes running well; we’re not achieving parity via setbacks and underperformances. We like to see our favorite athletes race fast, race often, and race their rivals, and if the men’s 100m continues on its current trajectory, we’re set up for plenty more of all three during a very exciting summer.

When In Rome… Ride The Pack To A PB 🇮🇹

Trayvon Bromell wasn’t the only one who showed out at the Golden Gala last weekend. As the laps clicked by and the Diamond League season marches on, the big stars appear to be settling into a largely familiar pattern.

On the infield, Valarie Allman extended her streak in the discus, thanks to a 69.21m fifth-round throw to pick up her 23rd straight victory. Sandi Morris took a leap forward (upward?) with a win and 4.80m season’s best in the pole vault. And despite needing a combined seven attempts to clear 2.23m, 2.26m, and 2.28m, Sanghyeok Woo soared over 2.32m on the first attempt to finish atop the high jump standings.

Anavia Battle nabbed her third DL win of the season with her 22.53 clocking in the 200m. Along with a 22.75m win in Hengelo on Monday, she remains undefeated on the season over six races. Quincy Hall delivered classic drama in the 400m, trading the lead with South African Zakithi Nene several times down the homestretch before leaning to a 44.22 over Nene’s 44.23. Despite his slow start to the season, discount the Olympic champion later in the summer at your own peril.

The most memorable performances of the evening, however, came in the distance events. In the women’s 5000m, a “slow” early pace (the rabbits delivered a 14:10 tempo for the opening laps) may have cost Beatrice Chebet a world record, as the double Olympic champion did a lot of solo running in the last 2km to run 14:03.69, the second fastest 5000m of all time. Chebet continues to make a strong case for the undisputed world’s best distance runner, this time demonstrated by the ease with which she dropped Gudaf Tsegay, a two-time World champion and current WR holder, and Nadia Battocletti, the Olympic silver medalist over 10,000m. Chebet breaking Tsegay’s 14:00.21 mark and becoming the first woman to run sub-14 on a track feels, at this point, like more of an inevitability than a hypothetical.

Behind Chebet, the top eight finishers broke 14:30 and 16 of 17 finishers ran under 15 minutes. Josette Andrews continued her strong start to the season with a 14:25.37 run for sixth place and an 18-second PB. Andrews is now the third fastest American of all time at the distance, behind Shelby Houlihan and her OAC teammate Alicia Monson. Houlihan finished tenth in the race in 14:45.29, her first 5000m since her four-year ban. With Elle St. Pierre out of USAs after giving birth to her second child, Paris Olympian Parker Valby out with an injury, and Elise Cranny looking like a bit of a wild card after a few underwhelming GST performances, Andrews seems well-positioned to make her first outdoor U.S. team next month.

Without Jakob Ingebrigtsen to string out the field, the men’s 1500m ended in a massive homestretch sprint featuring virtually every runner in the race. Frenchman Azeddine Habz ended up outleaning Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot, 3:29.72 to 3:29.75, as the top 12 finishers ran under 3:32 and every single one of the 16 finishers ran 3:32.5 or faster. Over half the field set personal bests, including German and Swedish national records for Robert Farken (3:30.80) and Samuel Pihlström (3:30.87), respectively. It was both an absurdly deep and fast field, with 13 of the top 15 outdoor times in the world this year coming from one race.

In short, the DL demonstrated once again that it is inarguably better than Grand Slam Track at getting a heckuva lot of distance runners qualifying marks and new personal bests. That may not always make for the most interesting or unpredictable outcomes (Beatrice Chebet has to have -10,000 odds to win any rabbited race she enters at this point), but for the athletes themselves, it’s still the best path to pursue if your goal is to head into your national championship with a flashy season’s best and an auto-qualifier for Tokyo in your pocket. Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse may be delivering more entertaining results on the GST circuit, but the two fastest American 1500m runners so far this season are Jonah Koech and Vince Ciattei.

Will that matter for the U.S. team? Probably not. Hocker, Nuguse, and Hobbs Kessler have the auto-Q for Tokyo from last summer (along with Gary Martin and Ethan Strand via indoor mile), and a handful of others are in the ranking quota. So at least in one event, there likely won’t be a guy finishing seventh in the final at USAs and making the team because he knocked out the standard at a Diamond League event.

On the other hand, mid-distance runners from nations that don’t always field a full team in every World event need the critical boost that qualifying (and ranking points) offers, so Italian Federico Riva, Irishman Cathal Doyle, and Pole Filip Rak are probably feeling pretty good about their results in Rome right now.

The mental boost of running really fast cannot be overrated either. The women’s 1500m was not quite as fast, but it still yielded the first American sub-four of the season via Heather MacLean’s 3:59.71 fourth-place finish and a pair of lifetime bests for Australians Sarah Billings (3:59.24) and Abbey Caldwell (3:59.32)—a nice consolation for not quite being able to match eventual winner Sarah Healy’s finishing speed. MacLean, who recently left New Balance Boston, her training group of six years, has to be feeling vindicated and confident about her switch to new coach Juli Benson.

It’s an oversimplification to suggest that the future of professional track and field will be a sprint-focused league and a distance-focused one, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. But the more likely (and arguably best) outcome is that the menu of options available to athletes will both widen and become more specific, as individual meets and even entire circuits become more known for delivering a certain kind of product.

Oslo Is Looking O-Fast 💨

The Bislett Games, co-branded as the Oslo Diamond League meeting, are set to take place tomorrow, and it’s shaping up to be a fun and fast day of track and field. Like Rome before it, this is a meet where rivalry narratives and points-chasing (yes, the Diamond League technically has points) take a backseat to running really fast.

It’s June, which means all the “too early” protestations have gotta stop sometime. And while Norway isn’t known for its blistering summer heat, forecasts around 70 degrees Fahrenheit shouldn’t make for the worst sprint conditions.

This women’s 100m is most notable for it being Julien Alfred’s season debut in her signature event. The Saint Lucian and fastest woman in the world has been on a tear across all sorts of other distances since striking gold in Paris, and currently holds the world lead over 200m, 21.88. It’s hard to envision anyone else giving her a scare—nobody in the field has broken 11 seconds this season—but as we’ve established, the short sprints have been weird in 2025. More likely, her time and margin of victory will be inelegantly compared to Melissa Jefferson-Wooden’s Philly performance for future matchup speculation.  

The meet ends with a rematch of the Paris podium over 400m hurdles, as Karsten Warholm, Rai Benjamin, and Alison dos Santos see head-to-head-to-head competition for the first time in 2025. Oddly, the race distance is nonstandard, as they’ll only contest a 300m hurdles, which potentially favors Warholm, the hometown hero. But let’s not forget that Benjamin is a sub-20 second runner in the flat 200m. Warholm also deserves kudos for welcoming his chief rivals to Oslo, rather than setting up a watery field to give himself an easy but crowd-thrilling victory.

But the races that have historically gotten all the attention in Oslo have been distance and middle-distances. The race getting the most pre-meet hype is the men’s 5000m, which is being billed as a world record attempt for Ethiopia’s Hagos Gebrhiwet (currently at #2 all-time with a 12:36.73 PB), Yomif Kejelcha (#4 all-time;12:38.95), and Berihu Aregawi (#7 all-time; 12:40.45). Looking at those stat lines, Joshua Cheptegei’s 12:35.36 doesn’t feel entirely out of reach, but we also know 5000m WR attempts rarely go exactly as planned. Americans Graham Blanks, Cooper Teare, and Nico Young could use the back half of the pack to target the American record, which is a tall order as it’s Grant Fisher’s 12:44.09 (indoors) and/or 12:46.96 (outdoors). As it stands, Young’s not crazy far off after his 12:51.56 indoors, but this ain’t BU anymore. His last race should be a confidence booster as his 3000m win at Grand Slam Track in Philly showed off an even further improved set of wheels and slightly more streamlined running mechanics.

The men’s 800m brings back Paris silver medalist Emmanuel Wanyonyi (Kenya) and bronze medalist Djamel Sedjati (Algeria), plus three other finalists from that race, for the most talent-packed 800m field of the year outside the GST circuit. Sedjati and Gabriel Tual of France are making their 800m season debuts and Wanyonyi looked formidable in Kingston, where he took down the world’s best milers in their own event. But then he lost to Great Britain’s Max Burgin—also in this field—over 800m in Rabat. Right now, Marco Arop seems like the best half-miler in the world, but after Bislett, we’ll have a better sense of the rest of the pecking order.

In the women’s 3000m steeplechase, Kenya’s Faith Cherotich has the world lead at 9:05.08. She’ll look to hold onto it in Oslo, but she’s likely going to need to run quite a bit faster—and take down World/Olympic champ Winfred Yavi for the second time this season. Norah Jeruto and Jackline Chepkoech will likely be in the mix of a sub-nine-minute race, and as has been the trend in DL races, Americans Val Constien and Courtney Wayment will be best served by laying off the pace early then picking off the suffering leaders late.

Though arguably the most historic event at the Bislett Games, this iteration of the Dream Mile feels a bit more grounded in reality. There are no 2024 Olympic medalists and no Jakob Ingebrigsten. But it should be a fun chance to see who—if anyone—looks poised to break into the event’s uppermost echelon. Timothy Cheruiyot (Kenya), Niels Laros (the Netherlands), Narva Nordås (Norway), Anass Essayi (Morocco), and Robert Farken (Germany) should all come in expecting to win, and we’re sure each of them already feels they deserve to be in the same conversation as Josh Kerr, Yared Nuguse, and Cole Hocker. Cheruiyot won’t want to get pipped at the line for the second time in two weeks, so a decisive win here would lend credence to the fact that the 2019 World champ is nearly back to peak form.

The headlines out of Oslo will likely all be focused on time—and like in Rome, that’s okay! But the most interesting conversations won’t be which record was broken and by how much; it’ll be about the margins of victory, the comparisons to racing being done elsewhere, and the ability of winners to take on competition. Running fast is the goal, but Bislett isn’t a glorified time trial—it’s a checkpoint to show the world what you’re really going to be capable of this season.

Mid-D Underdogs To Watch At NCAAs 🔮

Ah, the middle distances. They aren’t so short that one gaffe ruins an athlete’s shot at victory. They aren’t so long that disparity in talent leads to a strung out field with the winner being the one who tightens the screws best. All it takes is a slow prelim or an unexpected fall to change the dynamics of these races entirely.

As we’ve bleated ceaselessly in this newsletter, variability and weirdness make for memorable racing, in part because it leaves room for speculation and wild prognostication. And there are no better places to dive in the deep end of the upset pool than NCAA middle-distance races.

With all that said, we’ve reviewed the start lists, rooted around TFRRS, and thought carefully about moments from big races this year where certain athletes pass the eye test. And our educated conclusion is that there are very few true locks across these four events. Conversely, this weekend feels highly likely to deliver one or more true upset victories and newly-crowned champions.

Women’s 800m: Seven women have run sub-two this season: UNC’s Makayla Paige, BYU’s Meghan Hunter, and LSU’s Michaela Rose are probably the favorites. But to even make the final, they’ll need to finish in the top two, or run one of the next three fastest times. Let’s assume Rose’s heat will produce all the time qualifiers, thanks to her frontrunning and inadvertent rabbiting. Let’s also assume that about half the field is going to need to leave their final on the track in order to even advance, thanks to the quality of the field.

While we love a Wottle moment, the reality is, a come-from-way-behind win in the 800m is rare because of the energy expenditure required to navigate around eight bodies in varying stages of rigging up on the homestretch. So we are looking for an athlete who has exhibited comfort in passing through the rounds, who has the leg speed to go out with Rose, and the tactical savvy to simply hang on while the field rigs up around her. 

She’s never won an NCAA title, but Victoria Bossong checks those boxes. She has doubled or tripled at every outdoor meet she’s run this year, boasts a 1:59.48 PB, and was the Ivy League champion over 400m with a 52.02 best at that distance. Plus, she’s in Rose’s prelim, meaning she may have more wiggle room in terms of placement in order to reach the final.

Women’s 1500m: Six of the ten fastest women in NCAA history over 1500m are in this field: Oregon’s Klaudia Kazimierska and Silan Ayyildiz, Virginia’s Margot Appleton, Washington’s Chloe Foerster, South Carolina’s Salma Elbadra, and Providence’s Shannon Flockhart. Then Washington’s Sonia O’Sullivan was an Olympian for Ireland. That doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of how good this field is—those are just some of its tidier accolades.

However, when the dust settles, it just may be an athlete further down the performance list who emerges victorious: Riley Chamberlain of BYU. Chamberlain’s “only” run 4:08.42 for 1500… but the thing that stands out about Chamberlain is that she’s twice anchored the BYU DMR squad to an indoor title. In both instances, she registered the fastest split of any 1600m leg, and had to make up a gap on the leader to take the win. Sure, some athletes are better on relays than in individual events, just temperamentally. But Chamberlain is a proven winner, and is overdue for a solo crown.

Men’s 800m: Koitatoi Kidali will step onto his home track in Eugene with a modest season’s best of 1:47.12. He very well may walk off of it to rapturous cheers from the Duck faithful as an NCAA champion. In a vacuum, it seems borderline insane to project him as the winner. But this is a track and field newsletter, not a vacuum, so here’s some context. We’ll cop to the fact that this shouldn’t count as predicting an upset, because Kidali is the 24th fastest man ever over 800m, thanks to his 1:42.66 performance at the 2024 Kenyan Olympic Trials. 

Up to now, things haven’t quite clicked for Kidali at Oregon, but the guy is simply too talented to continue on a middling trajectory. Through some combination of training adaptations, Hayward Magic, and deserved confidence, Kidali will get it right, right when it counts most.

Men’s 1500m: This field features UNC’s Ethan Strand and Virginia’s Gary Martin, both 3:48 milers. Then there’s Washington’s Nathan Green, an absolute dawg in championship settings, and Wisconsin's Australian Olympian and 3:31 man Adam Spencer. If you’re a betting fan, you’re probably taking out a second mortgage to put it all on one of these student-athletes. But what about NAU’s Colin Salhman? 

Sahlman has some of the best range of this bunch: last year he ran 1:45, 3:33, and 13:38 in a one month span. With that sort of mid-D pedigree plus open 48-point 400m speed, he’s theoretically got the wheels to close with anybody. He just hasn’t quite nailed the tactics of a championship-style 1500m race yet. But if any coach can elevate an already lofty talent like Salhman and give him the tools he needs to run away from the field over the final 50 meters, it’s Mike Smith. This is the year it all falls into place, and Salhman could give his mentor the ultimate farewell present: NAU’s first men’s 1500m title since Lopez Lomong’s in 2007.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– There didn’t appear to be much rust in need of busting in Donavan Brazier’s first race since 2022—he won the 800m at something called “Toad Fest” in 1:44.70, running near-even splits, winning by over two seconds, and looking fantastic.

– BYU-bound Jane Hedengren shattered two more high school national records over the weekend, first going 4:23.50 for the mile at the HOKA Festival of Miles, and then doubled back a few days later at the Brooks PR Invitational with a 9:17.75 2 mile. 

– Also at Brooks PR, Texas sophomore Cooper Lutkenhaus broke the longstanding high school national 800m record by 0.19 seconds, breaking the tape in 1:46.26. And also at Brooks PR, Camryn Daily, a seventh grader, ran 51.67 for 400m. She’ll graduate from high school in 2030.

– Helen Obiri looks to have fully bounced back from her second-place showing at the Boston Marathon—she won the NYRR Mini 10k in Central Park in 30:44. A few ticks behind her was Weini Kelati, who led the majority of the race and took home a nice payday as first American.

– In non-Kishane Thompson, but still Jamaican sprinting Racers Grand Prix results, Tina Clayton went 10.98 in the 100m and Shericka Jackson posted a 22.53 200m victory.

– At the FBK Games in Hengelo, Netherlands, Femke Bol won the 400m hurdles in 52.51 and Mark English lowered the Irish 800m record to 1:43.92.

– USATF has announced the six athletes who will contest the marathon for Team USA at the Tokyo World Championships this September: Betsy Saina, Susanna Sullivan, and Erika Kemp; plus Clayton Young, CJ Albertson, and Reed Fischer.

– Notably absent from the World Champs roster is Conner Mantz, who is abstaining for good reason: he’s focused on taking down the American record (2:05:38) at the Chicago Marathon in October.

– The House vs. NCAA settlement has finally been approved, and the ramifications for collegiate track and field and other Olympic sports are slowly coming into focus. Russell Dinkins wrote about some of the impacts here—he also appeared on the CITIUS MAG podcast to discuss the ruling.

– The 2025-26 USATF Cross Country Championships are to be held in Portland, Oregon, alongside Nike Cross Nationals, and will serve as the selection event for the 2026 World Cross Country Championships to be held in Tallahassee, Florida.

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