Trinidad & Tobago’s Jereem Richards is one of the most versatile athletes in the sport of track and field.
The three-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist wants to further prove that versatility by becoming only the fourth man to join the exclusive club of athletes to run sub-10 in the 100m, sub-20 in the 200m and sub-44 in the 400m.
The current members of that club are South Africa’s Wayde Van Niekerk and Americans Michael Norman and Fred Kerley.
“The group that went sub-10, sub-20, sub-44 is the smallest elite group in sprints,” the reigning World Indoor 400m champion said in a recent interview with Trinidad Express.
“I would love to be part of it,” added Richards who turns 31 in January.
He has already checked off two of those boxes, recording six sub-20 200m performances with his personal best 19.80 coming in the 2022 Commonwealth Games final in Birmingham.
He checked off the 400m box at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, France, where he finished fourth in the final in a national record time of 43.78 seconds, his first time under the 44 seconds.
The last part of that puzzle is a sub-10 100m clocking, with Richards’s personal best of 10.19 coming at the Pure Athletics Elite Invitational in Clermont, Florida on April 20th of this year.
“I’m definitely thinking about going sub-10,” Richards said.
“I think I have the ability to, once training goes well and I’m a hundred percent healthy. I have to lay the foundation in training, day after day, week after week, month after month. If Coach allows me to run 100m races, I have the ability to do sub-10,” he added.
While he harbors hopes to go under ten seconds in the 100m in 2025, his focus will be geared towards the longer sprints, hoping to build on his historic performance in the Paris final.
“Joining the group of quarter-milers who have dived under the 44-seconds barrier was a great feeling. I definitely think I could go faster given a different lane, so I’m optimistic and just trying to be better each and every day. I’m not going to think about times too much. I’m just trying to be as good as I could be,” Richards said.