New golden boy Rohan Browning followed up his record-breaking run with a classic message for Australia on a stunning night in Tokyo.
Australia, your new wonderboy is the real deal.
In an event where Olympic dreams are crushed in seconds, Rohan Browning handled the heat at his debut Games and had a message for the rest of the world.
“Hopefully I’ve put a few people on notice now,” the track star said after winning his 100m heat to progress to the semi-finals.
Browning pulled out an astonishing run – smashing his personal best by 0.04 seconds – to clock a time of 10.01s, sparking raucous cheers from the small but vocal contingent of Australian supporters sitting about 50m around the bend from the finish line, as he gave them a celebratory wave.
There wasn’t a hair out of place as the eloquent 23-year-old with boy-band good looks zoomed past a field that included former world champion Yohan Blake, who’s won gold medals alongside Usain Bolt as part of Jamaica’s relay team.
Not since Joshua Ross in 2004 has Australia had a male runner to cheer for in the Olympics’ blue riband event. But Saturday night was worth the 17-year wait.
Browning’s start was electric and his endurance speed in the back half of the race meant he was never going to get caught. Pinned as the underdog of an event traditionally dominated by North Americans and the Caribbean nations, who would over-achieve by making the final, the Sydneysider harnessed far greater ambitions than those being spruiked in public by people outside his inner sanctum.
Donning a mask as he fronted a group of Australian reporters in the bowels of Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, Browning cracked a gag for the many people in lockdown watching him on their TVs back home.
“It feels good. If I can take one thing away from it, it’s that Australia, don’t go out on anti-vax protests, stay home and get around the underdogs at the Olympics,” he said.
Browning can tick off beating sprinting legend Blake but the Jamaican isn’t the only superstar on the Aussie’s self-described “hit list”. He wants them all, and he may well get them.
American Trayvon Bromell has the fastest time in the world this year (9.77s) and was a pre-Olympics favourite to win gold but stuttered in his heat, finishing fourth in 10.05s to barely scrape into the semis. Meanwhile, America’s second fastest qualifier Ronnie Baker crossed the line in 10.03s.
Browning was frighteningly good. He now owns the fastest time ever by an Australian at an Olympics and was even quicker than Matt Shirvington’s blistering 10.03 at the 1998 Commonwealth Games.
The one question mark around Browning heading to Tokyo was how he would cope under the bright lights of the world’s most prestigious international meet when he’d been confined to training and racing in Australia for the past 18 months because of the pandemic.
Footage of him soaring past rivals by 20m at Olympic warm-up events in Cairns may have looked pretty, but they don’t tell the full story of how you’re really travelling. Browning cast aside any doubts about his pedigree alongside the big dogs of world sprinting and the wild thing is, as fast as he ran, the young gun didn’t even get everything right.
Rather than something to be concerned about, his mid-race hiccup only makes Browning more confident he’s ready to shine on the biggest stage, as he issued a scary warning to his competitors ahead of the semis.
“There’s more to pull out of myself. I can definitely be pushed a bit more,” Browning said. “That’s the one thing I’ve been lacking on the Australian circuit and it’s the thing a lot of people pointed to when they would say I wasn’t capable of making a final or doing well at this Olympics. So it’s nice to prove people wrong.
“I’ve felt all the component parts (of my race) have been there but I haven’t put it all together and I still don’t feel like I have.
“I feel I got out the back there and really lost my mechanics and having said that, I still ran away with it. So it gives me a lot of confidence going into the semis and the final.”
Becoming just the second Australian after Patrick Johnson to break the 10-second barrier earlier this year, albeit with an illegal wind-assistance that meant his 9.96s wasn’t registered as an official time, would have put Browning on the radar of at least some of his competition. But Australia hasn’t exactly enjoyed a reputation as a sprinting powerhouse this century, so it’s likely his face didn’t register with many of the athletes who walked out next to him.
Former Australian Olympian Tamsyn Manou certainly didn’t think Browning would be drawing too many sideways glances before the race — but that all changed after he hit the afterburners in lane one.
“We have a sprinter!” Manou said in commentary for Channel 7.
“Yohan Blake has looked across and you know what he’s thought? ‘Who is that in lane one? I’ve been beaten by an Australian?’ Yes you have, Yohan Blake!”
Confident he can get even quicker in his next race, Browning is on track to make sure plenty more people know his name by the time the gold medal race is run.