Erriyon Knighton, 17, Drops Insane 9.99 For 100 Meters

May 02, 2021

* Jaylen Slade (left) and Erriyon Knighton secured remarkable performances at 100 meters on Sunday

Photo Credit: (left) Charles Karam/(right) MileSplit

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Erriyon Knighton has become the latest American teenager to break 10 seconds for 100 meters, on Sunday dropping a jaw-dropping all conditions 9.99 (+ 2.7) second time in the preliminaries of the Pure Athletics Sprint Elite Meet in Clermont, Florida.

It marked the third time since 2013 an American high school athlete broke 10 seconds, following the likes of Matthew Boling (9.98, +4.2) in 2019 and Trayvon Bromell (9.99, +4.0) in 2013.

Knighton's performance on its face, however, is even that more impressive, considering the wind conditions.

It signaled the Tampa-native's first race at the distance since August of last year, when he produced a career best performance of 10.29 seconds at 16 years old.

While Knighton made the decision in January to sign a professional contract with adidas, he remains a high school student. In 2014, while Trayvon Bromell was an 18-year-old athlete competing for Baylor University, he broke the World U20 record with a time of 9.97 (+1.8).

No high school athlete has yet to run a wind-legal sub-10 100m time.

The current world U20 leader for the 2021 season is Botswana's Letsile Tebogo, who ran 10.14 (+0.8) in February.

According to the International Track Records site, the 17-year-old world age group wind-legal record for 100m is 10.01 seconds and is held by Yoshihide Kiryu, who secured the performance in 2013.

Incredibly enough, though, Knighton wasn't alone on Sunday.

IMG Academy's Jaylen Slade did him one better in the finals.

While the 17-year-old teenager from Georgia -- and the recently-minted indoor 200m national record-holder -- did not achieve the same breathtaking milestone as Knighton, he secured an all conditions, and nearly wind-legal, time of 10.04 (+2.1) in the finals to finish fourth behind Puma's Cejhae Green (10.02), adidas' Yohan Blake (10.02) and RunUXpress's Devin Quinn (10.03).

Knighton followed his first foray under 10 seconds with a fifth-place finish in 10.07. That is the second-fastest time of his career.

Slade's performance in the finals wasn't even his fastest, either. He went 10.03 in the preliminaries on that same 2.7 meters per second wind.

Two years ago, when Slade was a freshman at Chapel Hill (GA) High School, he ran an all conditions time of 10.22 seconds for 100 meters. He later followed with a wind-legal 10.51 (-0.4), which was the fourth-fastest freshmen performance of all-time.

Knighton only began running in 2019 as a freshman for Tampa Hillsborough and ran a career-best 10.66 seconds at the AAU Junior Olympic Games, winning the first national title of his career.

While it's been just over four months since Knighton turned professional with adidas, the Florida-native has clearly proven the extended training has benefited him.