Kanyinsola Ajayi has broken the Nigerian national record in men’s 100m at the 2026 NCAA Division I East First Round track and field meet in the US.
The 21-year-old, representing Auburn University, dipped over
the finish line at 9.84 seconds in one of the event’s quarter-final heats in
the early hours of Saturday.
The time displaced Olusoji Fasuba’s 9.85 seconds, which had
stood as Nigeria’s national record since May 2006. In recent years, Ajayi has
shown potential to usurp Fasuba’s record. At the 2025 World Athletics
Championships in Tokyo, he clocked 9.88 seconds in a heat, becoming the first
Nigerian to qualify for the men’s 100m final in 18 years. He eventually
finished sixth in the final.
Ajayi also achieved the fastest time in the men’s 100m race
in 2026, surpassing Botswana’s Collen Kebinatshipi, the 400m world champion,
who had stunned the world with a sublime performance in the shorter sprint
earlier in the week.
Ajayi also inched closer to Christian Coleman’s NCAA 100m
record of 9.82 seconds, which the American set in 2017 as a student of the
University of Tennessee. The Nigerian becomes the second-fastest collegiate
athlete in US history.
At the same track and field meet, Samuel Ogazi continued his
global ascendancy. He set a new national record in the men’s 400m race with a
43.82-second finish. He also improved on the world-leading time he had set in
the event earlier this month.
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