Ajani Dwyer ran one of the fastest 100-meter dash times ever by a New Jersey sprinter Friday at the University of Virginia, although the time was heavily wind-aided.
Dwyer, a Penn State freshman from Washington Township, led all qualifiers among 75 sprinters in the 100 trials at the Virginia Challenge at Lannigan Field in Charlottesville with a time of 10.05.
The only New Jersey sprinters who’ve run that fast are Olympic gold medalists Carl Lewis and Dennis Mitchell. But the performance was assisted by a tailwind of 3.9 meters per second, nearly double the allowable 2.0 meters per second.
Dwyer’s wind-legal PR is 10.19 (with a 0.2 tailwind), which he ran two weeks ago in Gainesville, Fla.
With the wind correction calculator, you can convert a wind-aided time into a wind-legal time based on the extent of the tailwind. A 10.05 with no wind is equivalent to a 10.18 and a 10.05 with the highest legal wind – 2.0 – is equivalent to a 10.10.
So this is a remarkable performance that would have been a PR and the 4th-fastest time ever by a New Jersey sprinter with no wind, behind Lewis [9.86], Mitchell [9.91] and Mario Heslop [10.12].
According to the World Athletics database, Dwyer’s 10.05 is 20th-fastest in the world this year and 6th-fastest among U.S. men in any conditions.
The 100 final is scheduled for 7:20 p.m. Friday. Dwyer will be in Lane 4 and hopefully the wind will die down this evening.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 