By L A Adithya
Jamaica’s inevitable rising sprinting star, Oblique Seville, put in a performance of a lifetime, winning the Men’s 100m at the World Athletics Championship Tokyo 2025 on Sunday, defeating his compatriot and Olympic 100m silver medalist, Kishane Thompson, and the defending 100m Olympic champion, Noah Lyles, with an impressive personal best of 9.77 seconds. The 24-year-old champion witnessed the greatest in the business, Usain Bolt, witness his victory in Tokyo.
Despite performing underwhelmingly in the semi-final of the competition, barely pulling through to the final, he got his game together and produced the 10th fastest time in history, and bagging a PB along the way. This came after Noah Lyles picked on him for his poor race in the semi-final, where he came third. “That man was panicking in the back,” said the Olympic champion after the semi-final race.
Lyles clocked a season’s best of 9.89, which could be considered disappointing by his standards. However, following the conclusion of the race, Lyles humbly accepted the third-place finish.
The favorites in contention were reduced to eight after Letsile Tebogo was disqualified due to an unfortunate false start, giving flashbacks of Usain Bolt’s disqualification in 2011 in the final. But the 200m Olympic champion took it with grace and made his way out of the track with nothing but sheer professionalism.
Seville has seemed to have put himself on the right track after his unfortunate injury in the Olympics 100m final after he’d pulled his hamstring during the race. He’s gathered momentum throughout the year with his impressive performances in the Diamond League, setting his focus perfectly on Tokyo to become the world champion.
This was the first time since the 2012 London Olympics that two Jamaicans shared the 1st and 2nd places on the podium on the world stage, with Thompson clocking an impressive 9.82, just 0.07 seconds from his world lead this year of 9.75 seconds.