The Best 100m Sprinters of All Time

10. Noah Lyles

Noah Lyles built his name as a 200m runner first. For years, the 100m almost felt like a side project until he apparently decided that being one of the best 200m runners alive was not enough.

He won the 100m world title in Budapest in 2023 with 9.83. A year later in Paris, he and Kishane Thompson both crossed the line in 9.79, separated by only five thousandths of a second, with Lyles taking gold.

He followed that with World Championship bronze in Tokyo in 2025. His 100m résumé already contains a world title, an Olympic title and a 9.79 personal best, while his career is still unfinished.

Tenth feels right for now because the men above him either produced bigger peaks or controlled the event for longer. Lyles still has plenty of time to move higher.

9. Asafa Powell

Asafa Powell is one of the strangest cases in sprint history. For a period he looked like the perfect 100m machine, with a smooth start, massive acceleration and almost no visible wasted movement.

Powell first broke the world record with 9.77 in 2005. He matched it twice, lowered it to 9.74 in 2007 and eventually ran 9.72 in Lausanne in 2008.

Before Bolt arrived and started making world records look almost normal, Powell was the man everybody chased. The problem was that his championship record never quite matched his raw speed.

He could look terrifying during the season and then fail to produce the same level in the biggest final. That keeps him at number nine, although leaving Asafa Powell outside this list would feel wrong too.

8. Tyson Gay

Tyson Gay picked an awful moment in history to become this fast. In almost any other era, a man with a personal best of 9.69 and his championship record could have defined the generation.

Gay became world champion in Osaka in 2007 by beating Asafa Powell, then added the 200m and 4x100m relay titles at the same championship. That gave him three world titles from one meet.

Two years later in Shanghai he ran 9.69. At the time, that tied the second fastest legal 100m performance in history, but unfortunately for Gay his biggest problem had a very simple name: Usain Bolt.

Gay ran 9.71 in the 2009 World Championship final in Berlin and still lost by more than a tenth of a second. Sometimes a great athlete simply arrives with terrible timing.

7. Donovan Bailey

Donovan Bailey was eventually passed by plenty of men on the stopwatch. That does not bother me much because Bailey did something that matters enormously: he was fastest when the biggest race arrived.

Bailey became world champion in 1995, then came Atlanta in 1996. Frankie Fredericks, Ato Boldon, Linford Christie, Dennis Mitchell and Michael Marsh were all part of a loaded Olympic final before Christie was disqualified.

Then Bailey delivered 9.84, Olympic gold and a world record in the same race. Few sprinters can make a cleaner statement than that.

Bailey did not control the event for ten years, and that keeps him from climbing higher. At his absolute peak, though, he delivered everything at once.

6. Yohan Blake

There is a slightly cruel question attached to Yohan Blake. What would his legacy look like if Usain Bolt never existed?

Blake became world champion in Daegu in 2011 after Bolt false started in the final. Some people mentally reduce that victory because Bolt never completed the race, but everything Blake did afterwards showed how unfair that is.

In 2012 he beat Bolt at the Jamaican trials and arrived in London as a genuine threat. Bolt answered with 9.63, while Blake still ran an incredible 9.75 for silver.

A few weeks later in Lausanne, Blake ran 9.69 into a slight headwind. At that point, peak Yohan Blake was genuinely frightening.

Injuries stopped that peak from lasting long enough to create an even greater career. At his best, Blake was probably the one man who could stand beside prime Bolt and genuinely believe he could beat him.

5. Justin Gatlin

Justin Gatlin is impossible to discuss without the full context. Purely from a performance perspective, the résumé is enormous, starting with Olympic gold in Athens in 2004 and later including a personal best of 9.74 at the age of 33.

Two years later, aged 35, Gatlin beat Christian Coleman and Usain Bolt to win another World Championship 100m title. That kind of longevity is rare in an event built around explosive speed.

There is also another part of his career that cannot be ignored. Gatlin served doping bans, including four years of ineligibility following his 2006 case.

Pretending that never happened would make no sense. Pretending Gatlin never existed would make no sense either. With the full context included, he still produced one of the longest elite careers the event has seen.

4. Jesse Owens

Comparing Jesse Owens directly with Usain Bolt using only a stopwatch is almost pointless. Owens competed in a completely different version of the sport, running on cinder tracks with equipment and training methods from another world.

The raw number matters less than what he actually achieved. At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Owens won gold in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay, giving him four Olympic gold medals at one Games.

Then there is the place where he did it. A Black American athlete dominated the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany while Hitler's regime promoted racial superiority, giving Owens' success enormous historical weight.

Many men have run faster since, but very few athletes have produced a sporting achievement whose meaning reached so far beyond the clock. That is why Owens belongs this high.

3. Maurice Greene

Before Bolt, Powell, Gay and Blake, Maurice Greene showed everyone what real 100m dominance looked like.

Greene won the world title in 1997, again in 1999 and again in 2001. In between, he became Olympic champion in Sydney in 2000.

Then there was Athens in 1999, where Greene ran 9.79 and removed five hundredths from Donovan Bailey's world record. In the 100m, five hundredths is a huge jump.

Greene had the start, power and championship record. He also had the attitude of somebody who seemed slightly annoyed that seven other men had been allowed into his race. Ato Boldon, Frankie Fredericks, Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin were all around, yet Greene eventually became the man to beat.

That matters more to me than collecting fast times in ideal conditions. Maurice Greene owned an era, and only two men are above him here.

2. Carl Lewis

If we were ranking the greatest track and field athletes ever instead of focusing only on the 100m, Carl Lewis could easily make a case for number one.

Lewis became Olympic 100m champion in Los Angeles in 1984. He retained the title from Seoul in 1988 after Ben Johnson was disqualified, while at the World Championships he won the event in 1983, 1987 and 1991.

That final world title might have been the best one. In Tokyo in 1991, Lewis was 30 years old and ran 9.86, winning the world title and breaking the world record in the same race.

Olympic champion in 1984 and world record holder seven years later is not one great season. That is sustained greatness.

Lewis had the medals, the records and the longevity. He also had the ability to deliver when the sport placed him on its biggest stage, and for almost anybody else that would have been enough for number one.

Unfortunately for Carl Lewis, Jamaica eventually produced an alien.

1. Usain Bolt

There is no controversial pick here just to create engagement. When the discussion turns to the best 100m sprinters of all time, Usain Bolt is number one.

Beijing 2008 was already ridiculous. Bolt ran 9.69 to break the world record while visibly celebrating before he reached the finish, and somehow that performance became only a warning for what came next.

Berlin arrived on August 16, 2009, and Bolt ran 9.58 seconds. He removed 0.11 from his own world record in an event where athletes can spend entire careers searching for a few hundredths.

Then came London in 2012. Yohan Blake had beaten him at the Jamaican trials, so there was finally a real question around Bolt. He answered with an Olympic record of 9.63.

Four years later he won the Olympic 100m again in Rio. Three Olympic Games and three 100m gold medals show that Bolt was never simply one unbelievable race. He had the stopwatch and the championship performances.

At 1.95 metres tall, Bolt was also a strange physical prototype for the event. His starts were not always the best, but once he got upright and opened his stride, the rest of the field suddenly looked like seven men chasing one.

Everyone remembers 9.58, but Bolt's greatness was never only that number. Whenever the biggest race arrived, it felt like something unreasonable might happen, and quite often it actually did.

The Great Sprinters Who Missed the Top 10

Frankie Fredericks is probably the hardest omission for me personally. He ran 9.86, won Olympic silver in the 100m in both 1992 and 1996 and remained at the highest level for years.

Ato Boldon deserves a mention too. He collected four individual Olympic sprint medals across the 100m and 200m and became one of the defining faces of that 1990s generation.

Bruny Surin ran 9.84 and shared that era with Bailey, Fredericks, Boldon and Greene. That tells you how deep those fields really were.

Kishane Thompson has already run 9.75 and taken Olympic silver in Paris, while Oblique Seville became world champion in Tokyo in 2025 with 9.77. Their stories are still developing, so their final place in history remains open.

One incredible season can put a sprinter into the conversation very quickly, but greatness usually takes longer.