Kanyinsola Ajayi has added a rare distinction to an already outstanding year, becoming the first Nigerian to claim a podium place in the men’s 100m at the Diamond League final.
The 21-year-old clocked 9.97 seconds in Brussels on Friday to finish third in a race won by Jamaica’s Oblique Seville in 9.90 seconds. Cameroon’s Emmanuel Eseme took second in 9.93 seconds.
Ajayi’s latest achievement comes months after he produced the run that changed the standing of Nigerian sprinting. His 9.84-second performance set a new national record in the men’s 100m, ending Olusoji Fasuba’s 20-year reign as Nigeria’s record-holder in the event.
The sprinter has also delivered on the championship stage. At the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, he won bronze for Nigeria in the men’s 100m.
His emergence had already been evident earlier in the year when he swept the men’s sprint titles at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships, winning the 60m indoor and 100m outdoor events.
The outdoor title came in a wind-assisted 9.72 seconds, putting Ajayi joint sixth with Jamaican sprint great Asafa Powell on the all-conditions list of the world’s fastest sprinters.
Only Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay, Yohan Blake, Obadele Thompson and Andre De Grasse have run faster.
The Brussels podium now gives Ajayi another entry in Nigeria’s athletics record book. In the space of one season, he has combined an NCAA double, a Commonwealth Games medal, a national record and a Diamond League final podium, a sequence of results that has firmly established his name among the country’s leading sprinters.
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