In the last desperate strides of that 100-meter world final, Curley instinctively thrust his chest out and thrust his arms back like an aerodynamic Superman. As he did, his compatriots Marvin Bracey and Trayvon Brommel strained, slumped, lost their form. In a flurry of finishes, 6ft 3in Kerley somehow rose to the line to grab gold in 9.86sec, with Bracy taking silver and Bromell bronze, both in 9.88. It was the first American clean sweep of the men’s 100m podium since Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell and Dennis Mitchell in 1991. But long before the stadium announcer confirmed the result and the crowd had begun chanting “USA! USA!’ Curley was running on the back straight, celebrating raving about one of sports’ great stories. The bare bones of how the 27-year-old’s story will surely be rejected by Hollywood for pushing the boundaries of the impossible. When he was two his father was in prison and his mum was absent having taken a “wrong turn in life”. And so his aunt Virginia adopted him and his four siblings and raised them with eight of her own in Taylor, a small town 30 minutes outside of Austin, under the tiniest of roofs. It was a tough upbringing, but Kerley was always encouraged to dream and soar. “My brother and sisters and I were adopted by my aunt Virginia,” she explained afterwards. “We had one bedroom. There were 13 of us in one bedroom. We were on the pallet. At the end of the day, we all had fun, had fun, and are doing great things right now.” “What motivates me is to come from where I come from and not be in the same predicament,” added Kerley, who has the words “Aunt” and “Meme” — her pet name — with tattooed inside his bicep. “Keep achieving great things. You don’t want to be in the same position you were when you were younger.” Touchingly, he said he is now talking to his parents too. “Every day,” he said. “What happened before is not happening now.” There have been many sliding door moments along the way. Kerley wanted to be an All-American football player and only switched sports after breaking his collarbone in the final game of his high school career. And until 2019 he was a 400m runner, good enough to win a bronze medal at the world championships, before switching to the 100m and 200m when his ankles felt a little sore at the 2021 US Olympic trials. A month later he won a silver medal in the 100m in Tokyo – but finishing just 0.04 behind Marcell Jacobs left him with a strong sense of disappointment. For the past 11 months, Kerley hasn’t been able to stop himself from yelling “push” every time he watches a video of the final. To Eugene, however, this thrust was timed to perfection. “I saw Bracey in front of me,” he recalls. “It sank early. I dived in at the right time and finished the job. It’s amazing to get a clean sweep, the greats did it in 1991 and the greats of 2022 are doing it today.” It helped, of course, that Jacobs was missing from the final, having injured his leg in the heats. While Tokyo bronze medalist Andre De Grasse was a shadow of his former self after injuries and Covid. But Kerley, as he has done so many times in his life, seized the day. But everyone on the medal podium had a story worth amplifying. Bracey, for example, ran in the 2016 Olympics before throwing his arm in the NFL — only to later break it in his first game in a developmental league in 2019. “I made the decision right away to get back on the track,” explained Bracey, who had stints with the Indianapolis Colts and Seattle Seahawks. But again the challenges increased. His silver medal came after a ruptured appendix and bowel obstruction, which left him with eight staples from his navel to his pelvic area. And Brommel? Well, he spent nearly $300,000 between 2016 and 2019 to repair a severely damaged Achilles tendon that led to his exit from the Rio Olympics. In 2018 things got so bad that he even wrote a draft letter to his agent announcing his retirement. “It’s hard to wake up sometimes,” he said Saturday night. “In practice my ankles crack, my hips crack. I sound like an old man. But nights like this make it worth it.” In another era, these stories would have been absorbed into the mainstream of US sports and life: amplified and celebrated. Not anymore. Even in Eugene, which calls itself Tracktown USA, the 15,000-seat Hayward Field was perhaps only 80 percent full. There may still be time to turn things around, especially if Curley wins more medals in the 200m and 4x100m relays. It certainly helps that he’s a Renaissance man, with tattoos all over his body and a love of growing vegetables. “My crops are doing really well,” he said. “Before I left, I cut up some squash. I ate spinach out of the garden and it was amazing.” With that he tapped his left bicep and smiled. But the new Popeye of track and field isn’t just about adding more muscle to the track. He also wants to inspire the next generation. “Every day a bunch of young people look up to me,” he said. “If I can do it, they can.” What a STORY. What a show. And what a man too.
