Britons leading the race to succeed Bolt

Jamaican’s exit has left a void home runners can fill, write Ben Bloom and Molly Mcelwee

The problem with an outlier – a superhuman freak of nature – is that they are capable of doing what no other person can. For much of the decade that Usain Bolt ruled sprinting, he was almost unbeatable.

Then the dominant force retired and athletics entered its post-bolt era. A time of soul-searching for a sport that had grown reliant on its biggest star, but also a new era that has inadvertently resurrected the one thing that sits at the core of great sport: genuine competition.

Just 0.05 seconds separate the eight fastest 100m sprinters in the world this year and there are eight different nationalities represented among those who have broken 10 seconds in the past five weeks.

For British fans there is an added, novel dimension: for the first time since Linford Christie claimed Olympic gold more than 25 years ago, British runners are at the heart of the new wave.

Ahead of this weekend’s British Championships, Zharnel Hughes sits fourth in the global rankings for the season. Aided by a marginal tailwind, Reece Prescod is fresh from becoming the first British sprinter to run below 9.90sec in more than three decades. Chijindu Ujah is the reigning Diamond League champion.

When that trio lines up in Birmingham today, there is a real prospect of one of the fastest, most competitive, British 100m races in history.

It is Hughes who leads the way, courtesy of his 9.91sec run earlier this month in Jamaica, where he trained alongside Bolt until the eight-time Olympic champion’s retirement. An Anguillan native who switched allegiance to Britain in 2015, Hughes had forged his reputation over 200m, finishing fifth at the 2015 World Championships before crossing the line first at this April’s Commonwealth Games, only to be stripped of gold for making accidental contact with a runner in the neighbouring lane.

Having run only a handful of senior 100m races, he lined up alongside Jamaica’s former world champion, Yohan Blake, and the talented American, Noah Lyles, at the start of this month and blew them out of the water to move to equal second on the British all-time list behind Christie.

“It didn’t surprise me,” Hughes said of his personal best. “I’ve been training well so it was just a matter of time before it actually came out. I prefer the 200m, to be honest. It’s something I’ve been doing over the years, but this year I’m learning the 100m as I go along.

“I’m not going to go out there because I ran 9.91 and say, ‘I’m here to win every one’. Running 9.91sec shows I’m in good shape but that time is in the past now.”

Although the same age as Hughes, Prescod has much less experience. A succession of hamstring injuries meant he was barely able to run at a time when his peers were starting to excel.

Then, “sneaking under the radar”, as he puts it, he won the national title last summer and was the only British athlete to make the world final in London.

“Last season it was all kind of new to me,” Prescod said. “Once I got through the World Champs I realised I can’t get caught up with a name or a PB. The gun goes off at the same time so you’ve got to be fearless. That fearless attitude is what’s helping me perform.

“I don’t walk in the call room and think, ‘Oh, that’s so and so, he’s run that’. I just think, ‘These are normal guys like me’.”

A 10.04sec Diamond League victory into a headwind against some of the world’s best paved the way for his wind-assisted time of 9.88sec last month. Christie is the only British man to have run faster.

With Ujah, fellow sub-10sec man Nethaneel Mitchell-blake and youngster Ojie Edoburun also in the field, it is not out of the question that Christie’s 9.87sec British record could be under threat today.

Hughes said: “I’m not putting any expectations on myself but records are meant to be broken. I can’t say whether or not that will happen but we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Ultimately, the record is a sideshow. Whoever triumphs in Birmingham, there is a bigger goal for Britain’s sprinters. Prescod said: “If someone else wins, then fair enough. It’s not a tit-for-tat thing. We’re Brits and we’re trying to beat the rest of the world.”