Puripol Boonson Runs 9.90 to End Thailand's 48-Year 100m Wait

Thai sprinter Puripol Boonson won the men's 100 metres at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya in a Games-record 9.90 seconds on Friday, 25 September, at Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium. The 20-year-old burst clear of the field over the final quarter of the race, according to the AFP report carried by Al Jazeera. Oman filled the rest of the podium: Ali Al Balushi took silver in 10.04 seconds and Malham Al Balushi bronze in 10.11.

The Games record had already fallen once that evening. In his semifinal Puripol ran 9.91, a time that wiped out both his own Thai national record of 9.94 and the Asian Games mark of 9.92 that had stood going into the session, Nation Thailand reported. He then took another hundredth off it in the final. The same outlet said he had opened his campaign the previous day by winning his heat in 9.95. Read together, his three rounds ran 9.95, 9.91 and 9.90: he got faster every time he stepped on the track, and both of the evening's record marks were his own.

Because the previous Games best was 9.92, the 9.90 makes Puripol the fastest man ever to run the distance at an Asian Games. His semifinal time would have been enough to win the final as well, by 0.13 seconds over the Omani silver medallist.

The gold is Thailand's first in the men's 100 metres at an Asian Games since Suchart Jairsuraparp won on home soil at the Bangkok Games of 1978, a gap of 48 years, AFP reported. Every edition of the event in between went to someone else. That is the part of this result that travels beyond athletics: a national drought measured in decades, closed by a runner who has not yet reached his twenty-first year.

Puripol was not the only sprinter to reset the book in Nagoya. China's Chen Yujie won the women's 100 metres on the same evening in a Games-record 11.06 seconds. AFP noted that both finals, the blue riband events of any athletics programme, were run in front of rows of empty seats. Swimming, diving and equestrian events at these Games are staged in Tokyo, but Nagoya and the wider Aichi prefecture are the main host.

Two things the reports left open. Neither Nation Thailand nor AFP published a wind reading for the semifinal or the final, the measurement that decides how a sprint time is treated outside a Games record book. And neither said which events Puripol will contest for the rest of the programme.