Simbine to take on record holder Omanyala next month
● SA sprint star Akani Simbine is to take on African 100m record-holder Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya next month in a shootout between the continent’s two fastest men of all time.
Organisers confirmed the race would be the main event of the fourth meet of the GP series, scheduled for Germiston on April 13, a week before the national championships in Cape Town.
The series will effectively kick-start SuperSport’s four-year broadcast deal with Athletics SA, believed to be worth more than R50-million and is expected to offer fans a larger fare of live viewing than when SABC was the broadcaster. From track and field to road, from elite to schools level, athletics will get playtime in real time.
Fans will get to watch Simbine versus Omanyala in what could be a dress rehearsal of their anticipated battles at the African championships in June, the world championships in July and the Commonwealth Games in August.
Simbine, 28, is the reigning African and Commonwealth Games champion, but Omanyala, 26, is the threatening usurper, having already snatched the continental 100m mark from the South African.
Simbine posted the African record in Hungary in early July last year when he clocked 9.84sec, eclipsing Nigerian Olusoji Adetokunbo Fasuba’s 9.85, which had stood for just more than 15 years.
Before that the record of 9.86 set by Frank Fredericks at the Atlanta Olympics had endured for two decades, only being equalled by Divine Oduduru, another Nigerian, in 2019.
Yet Simbine’s mark survived just two months and nine days before Omanyala scorched the track at the Moi international sports centre in Nairobi in an incredible 9.77 to catapult to eighth on the world’s all-time list. Omanyala is a late bloomer. Before 2021 his 100m personal best was 10.32, although perhaps his progress was delayed by serving a 14-month doping ban in 2018 and for part of 2019. Perhaps it was enhanced?
Last year, aged 25, Omanyala broke 10 seconds for the first time, going 9.96 and then 9.86 on the same day in Austria on August 14. He has the distinction of being the oldest first-timer among the world’s top 10 sub-tenners, where the average age is 21.
Simbine was 21 when he first broke 10, and to date he has notched up 32 sub-10 runs, or 34 if one includes two wind-assisted efforts.
At the Tokyo Olympics Simbine and Omanyala competed in separate heats and semifinals, with Simbine finishing fourth overall and the Kenyan missing out on a spot in the final by a two-hundredths of a second.
The two have faced off only once before, in Brussels last year after the Games, and the Kenyan got the better of an uninspired Simbine. Omanyala will carry the favourite tag into Germiston, considering he competed in several indoor races in France last month.
The five-meet GP series will start in Bloemfontein on March 16, before moving to Cape Town (March 23), Potchefstroom (April 6), Germiston and Cape Town again (May 21). However, the Sunday Times understands that only the middle three meets are guaranteed to be aired, with each broadcast lasting two hours.