Albeit with a heavy tailwind at his back, St. Petersburg (Fla.) Gibbs High senior Trayvon Bromell became the first prep runner to eclipse 10 seconds in the 100-meter dash.
The Baylor-bound sprinter won the event at the Great Southwest Classic with a time of 9.99 seconds on the University of New Mexico track. While remarkably impressive, his effort does not qualify as the national record due to a tailwind of 4.0 meters per second.
That honor still belongs to former Groveland (Fla.) South Lake High star Jeff Demps, whose time of 10.01 seconds at the 2008 U.S. Olympic trials still ranks as the U.S. No. 1 prep time in history. Demps, who ran the first leg of the silver medal-winning 4x100-meter relay squad at the 2012 London Olympics this past summer, was traded from the
New England Patriots to the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the 2013 NFL Draft.
Still, Bromell's 100-meter dash time at Great Southwest is the fastest time among high school track and field athletes ever recorded using the fully automatic timing system.
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By means of comparison, as an 18-year-old in 2001, Great Britain's Mark Lewis-Francis covered 100 meters in 9.97 seconds at the World Athletics Championships, but a failed wind instrument reading meant the time could not be confirmed. In late April, Japanese sprint sensation Yoshihide Kiryu, 17,
clocked a qualifying time of 10.01 seconds.
