Ferdinand Omanyala takes down another world-beater at the Kip Keino Classic. Is he now a genuine contender for the world title?

In this piece, Deji Ogeyingbo opines on the status that Ferdinand Omanyala has arrived at in 2023 with five wins in five starts this season. Today, May 13, 2023, Ferdinand Omanyala enjoyed a win over 100 meters at the Kip Keino Classic in front of 60,000 of his fellow Kenyans. 

Ferdinand Omanyala takes down another world-beater at the Kip Keino Classic. Is he now a genuine contender for the world title?

In the men’s 100m professional circuit, arguably no sprinter has been on an upwards trajectory in the last 18 months than Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala. The Kenyan has become the African and Commonwealth Games Champion in that span while taking a big chunk out of the African Record by lowering it to 9.77s.

But as much as athletics is a sport that is always inundated with numbers and how far athletes can reach in their individual discipline, the wider picture will always be winning global medals. Titles can’t be taken away from you even after retirement, and more importantly for the athletes, these are what sponsors use to gauge how much you are worth in monetary terms compared to their rivals. 

For Omanyala, who you will tag as a late bloomer into the sport, he has been behind his rivals in terms of global appeal and medals won, and the only way to get to their level is to beat them at every given opportunity. That is a tough question considering how hard it is for meet organizers to get marquee sprinters to lock horns in the same meet. Most times, it’s due to the financial cost and, more cheekily, athletes not wanting to risk losing before a major championship. 

And one by one, Omanyala is sprinting his way to the top, having gotten a smaller piece of the pie at the start of his career. At the Kip Kieno Classic, the Kenyan once again took down another world beater in 100m World Silver medallist Marvin Bracy and 200m Olympic and world medallist Kenny Bednarek. The time is 9.84. A world leader and it was into a negative headwind of -0.5 m/s. That was very fast by any metric, giving him a psychological advantage going into the summer. 

Omanyala’s duel with Bracy was the rather more enticing prospect. You will consider the latter to be in the top bracket of earners in the sport, having just penned a new deal with Nike after his Silver medal in Oregon in 2022. Before today, Bracy held a 3-0 head-to-head win over the…