Ajayi Equals Personal Best, Breaks Meet Record with 9.92s Sprint in France

Kanyinsola Ajayi continued his impressive run of form on Monday evening, clocking a blistering 9.92 seconds to win the men’s 100m at the Meeting International Sotteville-lès-Rouen in France — matching his personal best and setting a new meeting record.

Competing from lane five at the Stade Jean Adret, the 20-year-old Nigerian sprint sensation had a reaction time of 0.156 seconds as he powered past a stacked field featuring five athletes with sub-10 second credentials. His performance erased the previous meeting record of 10.02 seconds set by Trinidad and Tobago’s Keston Bledman in 2015, benefiting from a legal tailwind of +1.7 m/s.

Cameroon’s Emmanuel Eseme secured second place in 10.04s, while Senegal’s Mamadou Sarr finished third in 10.10s. Great Britain’s Eugene Amo-Dadzie (10.16s) narrowly edged Australia’s Rohan Browning, who posted the same time, into fifth place on time differential.

Jerome Blake of Canada came sixth with 10.23s, followed by South Africa’s Tsebo Matsoso (10.32s) and French sprinter Jimmy Vicaut (10.36s).

This marked Ajayi’s first race since his fourth-place finish at the NCAA Championships in Eugene last month, where he ran 9.92s for the first time. That breakthrough performance signaled his arrival among the elite, and Monday’s showing further underlined his consistency and readiness for top-tier international competition.

Ajayi’s time places him among the world’s fastest sprinters in 2025 and moves him into a tie for fourth on Nigeria’s all-time list with Seun Ogunkoya and Udodi Onwuzurike. Only Olusoji Fasuba (9.85s), Divine Oduduru (9.86s), and Godson Oghenebrume (9.90s) have run faster.

Currently a standout at Auburn University, Ajayi now owns two of the five fastest legal 100m times ever recorded by a Nigerian — both achieved at age 20. He joins Ogunkoya and Davidson Ezinwa with four career sub-10-second performances, the second-most by any Nigerian sprinter.

Ajayi claimed the national 100m title in Nigeria in June 2024 and reached the semi-finals of the men’s 100m at the Paris 2024 Olympics, also contributing to Nigeria’s 4x100m relay effort.

At the African Championships earlier this year in Douala, Cameroon, he finished just outside the medals in the individual 100m but anchored Nigeria’s 4x100m team to a silver medal.

His indoor season was equally noteworthy, having clocked 6.48 seconds over 60m at the NCAA Indoor Championships in March, followed by a runner-up finish at Virginia Beach in 6.52s in a competitive final.