Paris Olympics: Crystal balls show Nigeria has no hope of medals in men’s and women’s 100m

The crystal ball of the governing body of athletics in the world, the World Athletics has predicted the likely winners of medals in the men’s and women’s 100m, the most prestigious medal at the Olympic Games, and unfortunately, no Nigerian athlete is given a chance of winning a medal of any colour in the men’s and women’s event.

 Contender in the women's event according to World Athletics are USA’s Sha’Carri Richardson, winner of the world title in Budapest last year, who they believe is capable of ending the run of four consecutive Olympic titles in this event for Jamaica.

Richardson won the US trials in 10.71, the fastest time so far this season, to set herself up for a first Olympic appearance. After missing the Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 World Championships, she finally brought her talents to bear upon a global event in Hungary last year. She won the 100m title from out in lane nine – having failed to secure one of the two automatic qualifying places in the semifinals – and ran a championship record of 10.65.

She was followed home by two bemedalled Jamaicans: Shericka Jackson, the two-time world 200m champion, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the defending champion who won the Olympic 100m titles at the 2008 and 2012 Games.

The 30-year-old Jackson earned the right to seek her first individual Olympic title in Paris by winning a 100m and 200m double at last month’s Jamaican trials, clocking 10.84 over the shorter distance and putting herself fifth on this year’s world list.

But on July 9 she pulled up when on the brink of winning the 200m at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial meeting in Szekesfehervar and what should have been a confirmation of her Olympic form turned into an open question.

At the age of 37, Fraser-Pryce – who also earned Olympic 100m bronze in 2016 and took silver behind Thompson-Herah in Tokyo – earned her Paris place by finishing third in the national trials in 10.94, having clocked 10.91 in the semifinals. Also registered for the 4x100m, Fraser-Pryce, in her fifth Games, will be seeking to add further Olympic medals to her current collection of three golds, four silvers and a bronze.

Second place in the Jamaican trials went to Jackson’s 19-year-old training partner Tia Clayton, who set a PB of 10.86 in the semifinals and pushed her senior rival in the final as she clocked 10.90.

Similarly, Richardson will also be accompanied by training partners in the form of Melissa Jefferson and Twanisha Terry, who respectively clocked a personal best of 10.80 and 10.89 at the trials.

In the men’s event, Noah Lyles has already succinctly previewed the men’s 100m at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Asked after his London Diamond League win on 20 July what could be expected of him at the Games, he replied: “I’m going to win. It’s what I always do.”

The 27-year-old from Gainesville, Florida, who secured a third consecutive world 200m title last year as well as a first over 100m, has been talking for a year about the possibility – or should that be probability? – of winning four golds in Paris, thus emulating his illustrious United States forebears Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, who achieved that feat at a single Games in, respectively, 1936 and 1984.

For this natural-born 200m runner, the 100m is the event he has worked to master, and it offers him the possibility of earning the first of his four prospective golden moments in the French capital.

But for all Lyles’ boundless confidence, the 100m is far from being a foregone conclusion.

At the US trials, he was chased home by the man who claimed Olympic 200m silver ahead of him in Tokyo, Kenny Bednarek, who was second in a PB of 9.87, with third place going to 2022 world champion Fred Kerley, who ran a season’s best of 9.88.

Lyles also faces strong challenges from the two men above him on this year’s world top list, Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson and Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya, and the man one place below him, Jamaica’s Oblique Seville.

Seville claimed second in 9.82, matching his personal best to take up fourth place in this year’s top list, while Ackeem Blake finished third in 9.92.

Thompson, who turned 23 on 17 July, followed up his trials performance by winning at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial meeting in 9.91 from two sprinters who will also figure large in Paris: Botswana’s 21-year-old world silver medallist Letsile Tebogo, who clocked 9.99, and Akani Simbine of South Africa, who recorded 10.01.