Tristan Evelyn ran the race of her life to win a huge payday at the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
The two-time Olympian won the women’s 100 metre dash at the much-talked about sporting extravaganza and with it took home half-million dollars.
Competing as a non-enhanced athlete, the fleet-footed Evelyn – standing 5-feet-four inches – looked the class in the field and separated herself from the others five runners by the halfway stage.
She sped to victory by a four-metre margin screamed with delight as she crossed the finish line and also shed tears of joy. She applauded herself for the winning time of 11.25 seconds which brought with it the reward of the huge prize purse of US$250,000.
“I can’t put it into words. I’m just so grateful. This means everything to me. This is my childhood dream coming through. I believed in my ability. For a lot of years, I doubted myself but this time around I wanted to be confident and believe in the work that I put in,” she said on the event’s YouTube channel.
Elsewhere Fred Kerly won the men’s 100 metre in 9.97 seconds in a race where the runners had to be placed in the starting blocks four times because of false starts and untied shoes.
Kerley, who predicted Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds would get “destroyed” ran a time that would have placed him last at the Paris Olympics two years ago, where he ran 9.81 and won bronze. He also won US$250,000 like Evelyn.
The only competitor to win the US$1 million bonus for going faster than the world record over the four hours of swimming, weightlifting and track in the specially built stadium on the Las Vegas Strip was Kristian Gkolomeev, who closed the night by swimming the 50-metre freestyle in 20.81 seconds. (PS)
