Home Editorial Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala may have missed the 100-metre final by timing his...

Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala may have missed the 100-metre final by timing his seasonal peak too early

There is a fine line in training and racing that can results in a well-time or poorly-timed seasonal peak. Perhaps Kishane Thompson and Noah Lyles and their respective coaches got it right, while Omanyala, perhaps peaked at the Kenyan Olympic Trials, more than a month earlier than required.

Christopher Kelsall

August 5, 2024

Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala may have missed the 100-metre final at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games due to peaking early.

When it mattered the 28-year-old powerfully-built sprinter from Kenya could not crack the 10-second barrier. In the semi-finals, he ran 10.08. However, he has demonstrated the talent to be an Olympic gold medallist.

You are phenomenal Ferdinand Omanyala. You have done 🇰🇪 proud. You are an inspiration and will do better next time pic.twitter.com/EqeEvzCpSa
— Mashirima Kapombe (@MKapombe) August 4, 2024

Omanyala’s personal best is 9.77 from 2021, his seasonal best was 9.79 seconds in June this year. He ran that time at the Kenyan Olympic Trials at Nyayo National Stadium, Nairobi. Sub 10.00 and being ranked 56th in the world is all that he needed to qualify for Paris. Omanyala entered the Olympics with a global ranking position of 4th. He clocked the very same time that Noah Lyles and Kishane Thompson ran in the Olympic final for 100-metre gold and silver, respectively.

That performance in Nairobi represents a near personal best. For Lyles and Thompson, 9.79 is their personal best. Perhaps they saved their greatest efforts for the Olympic final. Thompson ran his personal best in June at the Jamaican trials in 9.77, so the theory may be up in smoke considering Thompson’s run — but he is from a sprint-focused nation and would typically have better competition in his national trials than Omanyala would.

For example, with a wind of 0.9 m/sec, Thompson took the title in Kingston, with Oblique Seville second in 9.82 and Ackeem Blake third in 9.92 to book their trips to the Paris Olympics. In contrast, Omanyala only needed to compete against Mark Otieno who ran 10.12 and Meshack Babu who clocked 10.20. Perhaps Omanyala dug too deep at the trials. In both races in Paris, he clocked 10.08 seconds. That is all he had.

Meanwhile, Seville finished dead last at the finals. Similarly, perhaps he exhausted himself bettering Lyles when it did not matter as much.

Certainly, the start cannot be blamed, because aside from Lamont Jacobs, getting a jump on the field, it was a blanket start and near-blanket finish.

Omanyala raced 22 times since January over 60m, 100m, 4 x 100m, 200m and 400m. He ran personal bests this season over three of the distances. Similarly, Lyles, ran 24 times, gaining three new personal bests. But one of them was at the Olympic final. His upcoming 200m final may be a new personal best too.