Fred Kerley runs down a dream gold as US men sweep 100m at Worlds

When Fred Kerley was a young boy, sleeping on a pallet with 12 other kids in a single room in Texas, he would dream of travelling the world. Instead, on a night of impossible drama in Eugene, he conquered it.

In the final desperate strides of the world 100m final, Kerley instinctively stuck his chest out and thrust his arms back like an aerodynamic Super Man. As he did so, his compatriots Marvin Bracy and Trayvon Bromell were straining, flailing, losing form. It made all the difference as Kerley somehow got up to claim gold in 9.86, with Bracy taking silver and Bromell bronze both in 9.88.

It was the first American clean sweep of the men’s 100m podium since Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell and Dennis Mitchell in 1991. But by the time the stadium announcer had confirmed the result, and the crowd had started to chant ‘U-S-A! U-S-A!’ Kerley was halfway down the back straight, deliriously celebrating one of sport’s great rags to riches tales.

The bare bones of the 27-year-old’s story would have been rejected by a Hollywood scriptwriter for stretching the boundaries of the impossible. At two his dad was in jail and his mum was absent too. And so his aunt Virginia adopted him, raised him in Taylor, a small city 30 minutes outside Austin, and encouraged him to soar.

“Me and my brother and sisters got adopted by my Aunt Virginia,” he said after the race. “We had one bedroom. There were 13 of us in one bedroom. We were on the pallet. At the end of the day, we all had fun, we enjoyed ourselves and are doing great things right now.”

“What motivates me is coming from what I come from and not being in the same predicament,” added Kerley, who has the words ‘Aunt’ and ‘Meme’ - his pet name for her - tattooed inside his biceps. “Keep on