Who is Kishane Thompson? The heir to Jamaica’s sprinting throne ready to challenge for Olympic gold

Sign up to our free sport newsletter for all the latest news on everything from cycling to boxing Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news Sign up to our free sport email for all the latest news SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The national men’s football team is ranked 59th in the world, the national men’s cricket team last won the West Indies Championship back in 2012 and the Jamaican Olympic Association will send athletes in just four sports to the 2024 Olympics. Of the 88 Olympic medals ever brought back to the JOA headquarters in Kingston, 87 have been for athletics, with David Weller’s cycling bronze in the men’s 1km time trial at Moscow 1980 the lone exception. At the Jamaican Olympic trials in June, Thompson recorded a 100m sprint time of just 9.77s, recognised by World Athletics as the ninth-fastest effort of all time, ‘just’ 0.19s slower than Usain Bolt’s elusive world record which until recently was considered to be unbreakable. open image in gallery Kishane Thompson ahs beaten a number of Olympic rivals this season Even with those limiting factors hampering his formative years, he dominated domestic schoolboy championships, winning in a variety of disciplines throughout his high school years, before finally catching the eye of the wider athletics world at 2023’s Jamaican Championships, recording a time of 9.91s in the first heat of the tournament, the 61st-fastest effort in history.