South African triple jumper runs barefoot 100m in 10.40 seconds

Competing at a track meet in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Sunday, a South African athlete named Lleyton Davids ran a sub-11-second 100m, running barefoot. A video posted by AIS Athletics (the athletics academy that hosted the meet) shows Davids flying toward the finish and crossing the line in second place. To make his run even more impressive, Davids is a triple jumper (he’s the two-time reigning South African champion), and sprinting isn’t even his main focus. 

In the AIS Athletics video, Davids can be seen lining up in the blocks and waiting for the starting gun to sound. His competitors all have spikes on, but it didn’t end up helping them out much, as Davids flew past all but one of them. 

According to Davids’s World Athletics profile, his 100m PB is 11.02 seconds. He ran this time in March 2022, and while there’s a chance he has run other 100m races in his career (many lower-profile races aren’t listed by World Athletics, including his most recent run in the UAE), it’s amazing that he managed to better his official PB by more than half a second without spikes–or any shoes at all. (Davids appears to usually wear shoes when competing and training, as seen in various posts on his Instagram page.) 

Davids’s new PB (official or not) is tied for the 106th fastest in South African history. With 105 men ahead of him on that list, it may not sound that impressive, but keep in mind that each of those runners was likely wearing spikes (or shoes of some kind). 

Davids has won the triple jump title at the past two South African Championships, and he will have the chance to add a third at this year’s competition, slated for March 30 and April 1. 

posted Saturday March 25th